Patty's bookshelf: all en-US Fri, 28 Mar 2025 17:10:31 -0700 60 Patty's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg All the World Beside 220552309 An electrifying, deeply moving novel about the love story between two men in Puritan New England

Cana, a utopian vision of 18th-century Puritan New England. To the outside world, Reverend Nathaniel Whitfield and his family stand as godly pillars of their small-town community, drawing Christians from across the New World into their fold. One such Christian, physician Arthur Lyman, discovers in the minister’s words a love so captivating it transcends language.

As the bond between these two men grows increasingly passionate, their families must contend with a tangled web of secrets, lies, and judgments that threaten to destroy them in this world and the next. And when the religious ecstasies of the Great Awakening begin to take hold, igniting a new era of zealotry, Nathaniel and Arthur search for a path out of an impossible situation, imagining a future for themselves that has no name. Their wives and children must do the same, looking beyond the known world for a new kind of wilderness, both physical and spiritual.

Set during the turbulent historical upheavals that shaped America’s destiny, and following in the tradition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter , All the World Beside reveals the very human lives beneath the surface of dogmatic belief.]]> 352 Garrard Conley 0525537341 Patty 0 to-read 4.67 2024 All the World Beside
author: Garrard Conley
name: Patty
average rating: 4.67
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Song for Lonely Wolves (Joseon Detective, #1)]]> 50374531 A missing woman. A frozen body.
A bonded servant girl, determined to solve a mystery.

Joseon Korea, winter, 1590.
At the foot of a jagged mountain range, an isolated village lies in muddy snow. From her bed, a young noblewoman vanishes in the dead of night and rumours of a fearsome ghost with no face echo in her wake.

Hard-working and dogged Dan Ji, arrives in the long winding valley with her own ghosts. As a damo, a tea servant of the police force, she is overlooked and undervalued. Yet this case has gripped her heart, and she craves to prove her worth beyond simply cooking and cleaning for her superiors � she is determined to solve the mystery.

With only the officer in charge on her side � a hard young man with a bloody past and secrets of his own � Dan Ji must convince the local Magistrate and his provincial policemen to trust her judgement. Yet with mistrust brewing, the investigation slowly grinds to a halt. Until a frozen body is unearthed from the deep snows of the mountain range.

It is not within Dan Ji’s nature to leave a mystery unsolved, yet soon she discovers the fine threads of this investigation run much deeper than anyone has anticipated.

A dark historical mystery set in old Korea.

BOOK ONE IN THE JOSEON DETECTIVE SERIES.]]> 306 Lee Evie Patty 0 to-read 3.90 2020 A Song for Lonely Wolves (Joseon Detective, #1)
author: Lee Evie
name: Patty
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> This World Is Not Yours 203579241 This World is Not Yours by USA Today bestseller Kemi Ashing-Giwa is the perfect blend of S.A. Barnes' space horror and Cassandra Khaw's beautiful but macabre worlds. An action-packed, inventive novella about a toxic polycule consumed by jealousy and their attempts to survive on a hostile planet.

After fleeing her controlling and murderous family with her fiancée Vinh, Amara embarks on a colonization project, New Belaforme, along with her childhood friend, Jesse.

The planet, beautiful and lethal, produces the Gray, a “self-cleaning� mechanism that New Belaforme’s scientists are certain only attacks invasive organisms, consuming them. Humans have been careful to do nothing to call attention to themselves until a rival colony wakes the Gray.

As Amara, Vinh, and Jesse work to carve out a new life together, each is haunted by past betrayals that surface, expounded by the need to survive the rival colony and the planet itself.

There’s more than one way to be eaten alive.]]> 176 Kemi Ashing-Giwa 1250901863 Patty 0 to-read 3.19 2024 This World Is Not Yours
author: Kemi Ashing-Giwa
name: Patty
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon]]> 395724
Two veterans of decades of adventuring in Grand Canyon chronicle the first complete and comprehensive history of Canyon misadventures. These episodes span the entire era of visitation from the time of the first river exploration by John Wesley Powell and his crew of 1869 to that of tourists falling off its rims in Y2K.

These accounts of the 550 people who have met untimely deaths in the Canyon set a new high water mark for offering the most astounding array of adventures, misadventures, and life saving lessons published between any two covers. Over the Edge promises to be the most intense yet informative book on Grand Canyon ever written.]]> 408 Michael P. Ghiglieri 097009731X Patty 5 nonfiction, read-in-2025
If you enjoy reading about things like or Missing 411 (with less Bigfoot nonsense), this is a book for you. On the negative side, I did find the nearly 600 pages dragged in later chapters, with many of the stories beginning to feel repetitive. However, the heat stroke and dehydration chapter was so evocative I almost had to stop reading due to nausea. Which is a plus, in my opinion! I also came away with many gruesome tales to share on my own trip to the Grand Canyon, and really, what's a vacation without a horror story or two?]]> 3.98 2001 Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon
author: Michael P. Ghiglieri
name: Patty
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: nonfiction, read-in-2025
review:
Nonfiction covering, literally, every single death that has ever happened in the Grand Canyon in recorded history (at least as of 2016, which is when the edition I read came out). Each chapter covers a single cause of death � falling, heat stroke, drowning, etc � and the authors provide both fascinating accounts of some of the more spectacular deaths and investigations into the circumstances which tend to lead to death and advice on how to avoid dying yourself. Which ends up revealing the rather fascinating fact that more people have died of air disasters (plane collisions, helicopter crashes, etc) than any other single causes � I guess that means don't take a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon! D:

If you enjoy reading about things like or Missing 411 (with less Bigfoot nonsense), this is a book for you. On the negative side, I did find the nearly 600 pages dragged in later chapters, with many of the stories beginning to feel repetitive. However, the heat stroke and dehydration chapter was so evocative I almost had to stop reading due to nausea. Which is a plus, in my opinion! I also came away with many gruesome tales to share on my own trip to the Grand Canyon, and really, what's a vacation without a horror story or two?
]]> <![CDATA[Purgatorio: A Verse Translation by Jean Hollander and Robert Hollander by Dante Alighieri, Jean Hollander (Translator), Robert Hollander (Translator)]]> 169010669 0 Patty 4 4.46 Purgatorio: A Verse Translation by Jean Hollander and Robert Hollander by Dante Alighieri, Jean Hollander (Translator), Robert Hollander (Translator)
author: Jean Hollander (Translator) by Dante Alighieri
name: Patty
average rating: 4.46
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/17
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: historical-fiction, literary-fiction, read-in-2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Divine Comedy II: Purgatory]]> 32810
Beginning with Dante's liberation from Hell, Purgatory relates his ascent, accompanied by Virgil, of the Mount of Purgatory - a mountain of nine levels, formed from rock forced upwards when God threw Satan into depths of the earth. As he travels through the first seven levels, Dante observes the sinners who are waiting for their release into Paradise, and through these encounters he is himself transformed into a stronger and better man. For it is only when he has learned from each of these levels that he can ascend to the gateway to the Garden of Eden. The second part of one of the greatest epic poems, Purgatory is an enthralling Christian allegory of sin, redemption and ultimate enlightenment.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700Ěýtitles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust theĚýseries to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-dateĚýtranslations by award-winning translators.]]> 388 Dante Alighieri 0140440461 Patty 4 4.08 1321 The Divine Comedy II: Purgatory
author: Dante Alighieri
name: Patty
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1321
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/17
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: historical-fiction, literary-fiction, read-in-2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso]]> 14289427 Commedia is one of the most extraordinary visions of sin and redemption in literature. A work of boundless invention and vast intellectual synthesis, it broke new ground with the vigour of its language and storytelling. The three parts of the Commedia chart the spiritual and physical journey of Dante: in the Inferno he descends into a freezing Hell with the Roman Virgil as his guide, in Purgatorio he climbs Mount Purgatorio and is reunited with his last love, Beatrice, and, finally, in Paradiso, he ascends to heaven and a sphere beyond space and time.]]> 677 Dante Alighieri 0141197498 Patty 4
I'll stick to reviewing Robin Kirkpatrick's translation.

Kirkpatrick is a professor of literature, and I feel that guided his approach to the poem. His footnotes share some traits with both Dorothy Sayers's (religious, focused on poetic imagery) and the Hollanders' (academic, focused on grammar and context), but were most often centered on the story Dante wanted to tell: what was the point of including a specific historical figure? How does a single canto connect to themes in cantos earlier or later? Why does Dante portray his own earlier self as fearful or confused? Of the three translators I read, Kirkpatrick was probably my favorite (though to be honest, it was a close tie) and the one that most often led me to say, "Oh! Now I get it!".

The translation of the poem itself is fine, only occasionally rhyming in English. I quite liked the effect of the rare rhymes � they kept the whole thing feeling more like poetry than prose, but without the contorted syntax of forcing every line into a rhyme. ]]> 4.03 1320 The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso
author: Dante Alighieri
name: Patty
average rating: 4.03
book published: 1320
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/01
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: historical-fiction, literary-fiction, read-in-2024
review:
How does one review The Divine Comedy?

I'll stick to reviewing Robin Kirkpatrick's translation.

Kirkpatrick is a professor of literature, and I feel that guided his approach to the poem. His footnotes share some traits with both Dorothy Sayers's (religious, focused on poetic imagery) and the Hollanders' (academic, focused on grammar and context), but were most often centered on the story Dante wanted to tell: what was the point of including a specific historical figure? How does a single canto connect to themes in cantos earlier or later? Why does Dante portray his own earlier self as fearful or confused? Of the three translators I read, Kirkpatrick was probably my favorite (though to be honest, it was a close tie) and the one that most often led me to say, "Oh! Now I get it!".

The translation of the poem itself is fine, only occasionally rhyming in English. I quite liked the effect of the rare rhymes � they kept the whole thing feeling more like poetry than prose, but without the contorted syntax of forcing every line into a rhyme.
]]> Inferno (Hollander) 164156383 0 Patty 4
I'll stick to reviewing the Hollanders' translation.

This is by far the most thorough and academic of the versions I read; the footnotes are often three or four times longer than the actual canto they're covering. If you want a Dante that will explain every single minuscule grammar choice, review the several-centuries-long debate between scholars about whether interpretation A or B is the most likely, and cite similar phrasings in Vergil or the Bible, this is the book for you. If you don't need five paragraphs on what exact almanac Dante was using to calculate star signs, I'd stick with a different version.

The translation itself was fine, with no attempt at rhyming in English. Which did probably make this the most straightforward and easy to read of any version of the poem itself.]]> 4.26 Inferno (Hollander)
author: Robert Translators Holander and Jean Holander Dante Algher
name: Patty
average rating: 4.26
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/01
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: historical-fiction, read-in-2024, literary-fiction
review:
How does one review The Divine Comedy?

I'll stick to reviewing the Hollanders' translation.

This is by far the most thorough and academic of the versions I read; the footnotes are often three or four times longer than the actual canto they're covering. If you want a Dante that will explain every single minuscule grammar choice, review the several-centuries-long debate between scholars about whether interpretation A or B is the most likely, and cite similar phrasings in Vergil or the Bible, this is the book for you. If you don't need five paragraphs on what exact almanac Dante was using to calculate star signs, I'd stick with a different version.

The translation itself was fine, with no attempt at rhyming in English. Which did probably make this the most straightforward and easy to read of any version of the poem itself.
]]> <![CDATA[The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York]]> 9593791 From the New York Times perfume critic, a stylish, fascinating, unprecedented insider's view of the global perfume industry, told through two creators working on two very different scents.No journalist has ever been allowed into the ultrasecretive, highly pressured process of originating a perfume. But Chandler Burr, the New York Times perfume critic, spent a year behind the scenes observing the creation of two major fragrances. Now, writing with wit and elegance, he juxtaposes the stories of the perfumes -- one created by a Frenchman in Paris for an exclusive luxury-goods house, the other made in New York by actress Sarah Jessica Parker and Coty, Inc., a giant international corporation.We follow Coty's mating of star power to the marketing of perfume, watching Sex and the City's Parker heading a hugely expensive campaign to launch a scent into the overcrowded celebrity market. Will she match the success of Jennifer Lopez? Does she have the international fan base to drive worldwide sales?In Paris at the elegant Hermès, we see Jean Claude Ellena, his company's new head perfumer, given a he must create a scent to resuscitate Hermès's perfume business and challenge le monstre of the industry, bestselling Chanel No. 5. Will his pilgrimage to a garden on the Nile supply the inspiration he needs?The Perfect Scent is the story of two daring creators, two very different scents, and a billion-dollar industry that runs on the invisible magic of perfume.]]> 336 Chandler Burr 1429924659 Patty 0 to-read 3.97 2008 The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York
author: Chandler Burr
name: Patty
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Jawbone 44074748
When Fernanda, Annelise, and their friends from the Delta Bilingual Academy convene after school, Annelise leads them in thrilling but increasingly dangerous rituals to a rhinestoned, Dior-scented, drag-queen god of her own invention. Even more perilous is the secret Annelise and Fernanda share, rooted in a dare in which violence meets love. Meanwhile, their literature teacher Miss Clara, who is obsessed with imitating her dead mother, struggles to preserve her deteriorating sanity. Each day she edges nearer to a total break with reality.

Interweaving pop culture references and horror concepts drawn from from Herman Melville, H.P. Lovecraft, and anonymous 'creepypastas', Jawbone is an ominous, multivocal novel that explores the terror inherent in the pure potentiality of adolescence and the fine line between desire and fear.]]> 264 MĂłnica Ojeda 1566896215 Patty 0 to-read 3.57 2023 Jawbone
author: MĂłnica Ojeda
name: Patty
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Saltblood 199689207
Mary's dual existence will take her to a grand house where she'll serve a French mistress; to the navy where she'll learn who to trust, and how to navigate by the stars; to the army and the battlegrounds of Flanders, following her one true friend; and finding love among the bloodshed and mud. But none of this will stop her yearning for the sea.

Drawn back to the water, Mary must reinvent herself yet again, for a woman aboard a ship is a dangerous thing. This time Mary will become something more dangerous than a woman. She will become a pirate.

Breathing life into the Golden Age of Piracy, Saltblood is a wild adventure, a treasure trove, weaving an intoxicating tale of gender and survival, passion and loss, journeys and transformation, through the story of Mary Read, one of history's most remarkable figures.]]> 368 Francesca de Tores 1526661330 Patty 0 to-read 4.00 2024 Saltblood
author: Francesca de Tores
name: Patty
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Beck and Call (The Old Bridge Inn, #1)]]> 61947891
By returning to England, Edwin Harrow hoped to escape the treacherous lover and false accusations he left behind on the Continent. But when his secrets leave him open to blackmail, the worst thing he can do is fall in love with his blackmailer's brother, kind and gravely charming fellow servant William Bell.

After five lonely years as valet to a reclusive country squire, William is fascinated by prickly, standoffish Edwin. He suspects he wants more than Edwin is ready to give, but he cannot resist trying to break through that defensive shell.

And William has secrets of his own, namely his involvement in one of the literary societies recently driven underground by the political climate. When Edwin's messy past catches up with them, will it spell disaster for them both?]]> 236 Annick Trent Patty 0 to-read 3.86 2022 Beck and Call (The Old Bridge Inn, #1)
author: Annick Trent
name: Patty
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Gilded Scarab (Lancaster's Luck, #1)]]> 24656775
Everything changes when he buys a coffeehouse near the Britannic Imperium Museum in Bloomsbury, the haunt of Aegyptologists. For the first time in years, Rafe is free to be himself. In a city powered by luminiferous aether and phlogiston, and where powerful men use House assassins to target their rivals, Rafe must navigate dangerous politics, deal with a jealous and possessive ex-lover, learn to make the best coffee in Londinium, and fend off murder and kidnap attempts before he can find happiness with the man he loves.]]> 314 Anna Butler 1632167735 Patty 0 to-read 4.03 2015 The Gilded Scarab (Lancaster's Luck, #1)
author: Anna Butler
name: Patty
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dante: The Divine Comedy #1 - Hell (Dorothy Sayers, translator)]]> 18142419
Esolen also provides a critical Introduction and endnotes, plus appendices containing Dante’s most important sources—from Virgil to Saint Thomas Aquinas and other Catholic theologians—that deftly illuminate the religious universe the poet inhabited.]]> Dante Alighieri Patty 4
I'll stick to reviewing Sayers's translation.

She's one of the few English authors to actually stick to the terza rima (the rhyme scheme that goes aba bcb c), which on the one hand makes this feel more like poetry, but on the other hand can lead to some extremely tortured syntax as she tries to make the rhymes fit the meaning. It was sometimes hard to even understand what was happening.

I really enjoyed her footnotes, especially her interpretations of the "images", as she calls them. Sayers is the only devoted Catholic translator I've read of the Divine Comedy, and sometimes it's very useful to get the perspective of someone who takes this all seriously and wants to make the theology align with a modern perspective.

I don't think I'd recommend her as the only Dante to read, but she's an invaluable interpretator to combine with one or two others. ]]> 4.32 1320 Dante: The Divine Comedy #1 - Hell (Dorothy Sayers, translator)
author: Dante Alighieri
name: Patty
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1320
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/01
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: historical-fiction, literary-fiction, read-in-2024
review:
How does one review The Divine Comedy?

I'll stick to reviewing Sayers's translation.

She's one of the few English authors to actually stick to the terza rima (the rhyme scheme that goes aba bcb c), which on the one hand makes this feel more like poetry, but on the other hand can lead to some extremely tortured syntax as she tries to make the rhymes fit the meaning. It was sometimes hard to even understand what was happening.

I really enjoyed her footnotes, especially her interpretations of the "images", as she calls them. Sayers is the only devoted Catholic translator I've read of the Divine Comedy, and sometimes it's very useful to get the perspective of someone who takes this all seriously and wants to make the theology align with a modern perspective.

I don't think I'd recommend her as the only Dante to read, but she's an invaluable interpretator to combine with one or two others.
]]> Spanish Society, 1400-1600 972284
Beginning with a description of the geography, political life, and culture of Spain from 1400 to 1600, the unfolding narrative charts the country's shifts from one age to the next. It unveils patterns of everyday life from the court to the brothel, from the 'haves' of the aristocracy and clergy to the 'have nots' of the peasantry and the urban poor.

Historical records illuminate details of Spanish society such as the transition from medieval festivities to the highly-scripted spectacles of the early modern period, the reasons for violence and popular resistance and the patterns of daily living: eating, dressing, religious beliefs and concepts of honour and sexuality.

This compelling account includes historical examples and literary extracts, which allow the reader direct access to the period. From the street theatre of village carnivals to the oppressive Spanish Inquisition, it gives an abiding sense of Spain in the making and renders vivid the colours of a passionate history.]]> 286 Teofilo F. Ruiz 0582286921 Patty 5 3.79 2001 Spanish Society, 1400-1600
author: Teofilo F. Ruiz
name: Patty
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2001
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/06
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: historical-nonfiction, nonfiction
review:
Absolutely excellent examination of a historical period through a cultural lens.
]]> Don Quixote 130842808 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Patty 4
I didn't love this, the way I fall in love with some classics. On the other hand, I'm glad I read it, because it's one of those foundational texts that illustrate so much of the work written after it.

Regarding Grossman's translation specifically, I enjoyed it and thought the footnotes were helpful, but I didn't find it very different or better than other modern translations.

Regarding Lathrop's translation specifically, I have the same thoughts as above. The two of them made a nice balance with each other, since sometimes when one was confusing the other would be clear, and vice versa, but I'd be hard-pressed to choice only one as my preference.]]> 4.30 1615 Don Quixote
author: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
name: Patty
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1615
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/28
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: literary-fiction, read-in-2024
review:
Another book that's basically impossible to rate.

I didn't love this, the way I fall in love with some classics. On the other hand, I'm glad I read it, because it's one of those foundational texts that illustrate so much of the work written after it.

Regarding Grossman's translation specifically, I enjoyed it and thought the footnotes were helpful, but I didn't find it very different or better than other modern translations.

Regarding Lathrop's translation specifically, I have the same thoughts as above. The two of them made a nice balance with each other, since sometimes when one was confusing the other would be clear, and vice versa, but I'd be hard-pressed to choice only one as my preference.
]]> <![CDATA[The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History]]> 43862307 The Golden Thread weaves an illuminating story of human ingenuity. Design journalist Kassia St. Clair guides us through the technological advancements and cultural customs that would redefine human civilization—from the fabric that allowed mankind to achieve extraordinary things (traverse the oceans and shatter athletic records) and survive in unlikely places (outer space and the South Pole). She peoples her story with a motley cast of characters, including Xiling, the ancient Chinese empress credited with inventing silk, to Richard the Lionhearted and Bing Crosby. Offering insights into the economic and social dimensions of clothmaking—and countering the enduring, often demeaning, association of textiles as “merely women’s work”�The Golden Thread offers an alternative guide to our past, present, and future.]]> 368 Kassia St. Clair 1631494805 Patty 3 4.06 2018 The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History
author: Kassia St. Clair
name: Patty
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/01
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: historical-nonfiction, archaeology, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Spain: The Centre of the World 1519-1682]]> 22929512 587 Robert Goodwin 1620403609 Patty 5 3.57 2015 Spain: The Centre of the World 1519-1682
author: Robert Goodwin
name: Patty
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/07
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: historical-nonfiction, nonfiction
review:
A really excellent overview of Spain during its "Golden Age" (a period I knew far too little about) that ably balances political history with the story of painting, writing, and other arts. Written with a verve that pulls in a general reader, but with enough breadth of information to satisfy an academic.
]]> King Hereafter 958158
Dunnett depicts Macbeth's transformation from an angry boy who refuses to accept his meager share of the Orkney Islands to a suavely accomplished warrior who seizes an empire with the help of a wife as shrewd and valiant as himself.]]> 721 Dorothy Dunnett 0375704035 Patty 5
You may ask: do I need an 800-page incredibly dense historical novel about the 'true person' behind the legend of Macbeth that incorporates things like papal infighting over who gets to appoint bishops, Viking family dynamics in Scandinavia, and the creation of a Scottish national identity? BUT YOU DO. YOU REALLY, REALLY DO.]]> 4.26 1982 King Hereafter
author: Dorothy Dunnett
name: Patty
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1982
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: historical-fiction, literary-fiction, read-in-2024
review:
SO GOOD. My favorite book of the year, probably.

You may ask: do I need an 800-page incredibly dense historical novel about the 'true person' behind the legend of Macbeth that incorporates things like papal infighting over who gets to appoint bishops, Viking family dynamics in Scandinavia, and the creation of a Scottish national identity? BUT YOU DO. YOU REALLY, REALLY DO.
]]> <![CDATA[Italy in the Central Middle Ages: 1000-1300 (Short Oxford History of Italy)]]> 371420 316 David Abulafia 0199247048 Patty 4 3.69 2004 Italy in the Central Middle Ages: 1000-1300 (Short Oxford History of Italy)
author: David Abulafia
name: Patty
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/14
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: historical-nonfiction, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times]]> 359139
Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibers. In fact, right up to the Industrial Revolution the fiber arts were an enormous economic force, belonging primarily to women.

Despite the great toil required in making cloth and clothing, most books on ancient history and economics have no information on them. Much of this gap results from the extreme perishability of what women produced, but it seems clear that until now descriptions of prehistoric and early historic cultures have omitted virtually half the picture.

Elizabeth Wayland Barber has drawn from data gathered by the most sophisticated new archaeological methods—methods she herself helped to fashion.]]> 334 Elizabeth Wayland Barber 0393313484 Patty 4 4.30 1994 Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times
author: Elizabeth Wayland Barber
name: Patty
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/19
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: archaeology, historical-nonfiction, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:
A bit outdated (it was originally published in the mid-1990s) and with a limited focus area (mostly just the Near East and Greece), but still an excellent introduction to archaeological research on textiles.
]]> <![CDATA[Desolation Island (Aubrey & Maturin, #5)]]> 77425 "[O'Brian's] Aubrey-Maturin series, 20 novels of the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars, is a masterpiece. It will outlive most of today's putative literary gems as Sherlock Holmes has outlived Bulwer-Lytton, as Mark Twain has outlived Charles Reade." —David Mamet, New York Times

Commissioned to rescue Governor Bligh of Bounty fame, Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend and surgeon Stephen Maturin sail the Leopard to Australia with a hold full of convicts. Among them is a beautiful and dangerous spy—and a treacherous disease that decimates the crew.]]> 350 Patrick O'Brian 039330812X Patty 5 Desolation Island we get a wonderful femme fatale, an outbreak of typhus, an absolutely INCREDIBLE action scene of two ships chasing one another through near-Antarctic waters while simultaneously sinking and enduring mutinies, being stranded on the titular island, and suspicious whalers. It's all of my interests in one book! :D

My one critique is that the island stranding only takes up a few chapters, despite being the title, when I could have happily spent a whole book there. Nonetheless, the chase scene was one of the best set-pieces I've ever read in a naval book, and there's all the best qualities one expects from the Aubreyad: dry humor, spy shenanigans, ridiculous botany, fun minor characters, and the Aubrey-Maturin friendship. ]]> 4.40 1978 Desolation Island (Aubrey & Maturin, #5)
author: Patrick O'Brian
name: Patty
average rating: 4.40
book published: 1978
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/20
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: historical-fiction, read-in-2024
review:
Over the years I've struggled to get into the Aubreyad, but apparently the answer was just to jump ahead in the series. I've found #4 and #5 to be way more engaging and fun than #1-3 (which had their own good points, of course, but the jargon and plots were too complex and elaborate for me to keep straight). In Desolation Island we get a wonderful femme fatale, an outbreak of typhus, an absolutely INCREDIBLE action scene of two ships chasing one another through near-Antarctic waters while simultaneously sinking and enduring mutinies, being stranded on the titular island, and suspicious whalers. It's all of my interests in one book! :D

My one critique is that the island stranding only takes up a few chapters, despite being the title, when I could have happily spent a whole book there. Nonetheless, the chase scene was one of the best set-pieces I've ever read in a naval book, and there's all the best qualities one expects from the Aubreyad: dry humor, spy shenanigans, ridiculous botany, fun minor characters, and the Aubrey-Maturin friendship.
]]> Kiss Her Once for Me 60321485 The author of The Charm Offensive returns with a festive romantic comedy about a woman who fakes an engagement with her landlord…only to fall for his sister.

One year ago, recent Portland transplant Ellie Oliver had her dream job in animation and a Christmas Eve meet-cute with a woman at a bookstore that led her to fall in love over the course of a single night. But after a betrayal the next morning and the loss of her job soon after, she finds herself adrift, alone, and desperate for money.

Finding work at a local coffee shop, she’s just getting through the days—until Andrew, the shop’s landlord, proposes a shocking, drunken plan: a marriage of convenience that will give him his recent inheritance and alleviate Ellie’s financial woes and isolation. They make a plan to spend the holidays together at his family cabin to keep up the ruse. But when Andrew introduces his new fiancée to his sister, Ellie is shocked to discover it’s Jack—the mysterious woman she fell for over the course of one magical Christmas Eve the year before. Now, Ellie must choose between the safety of a fake relationship and the risk of something real.

Perfect for fans of Written in the Stars and One Day in December, Kiss Her Once for Me is the queer holiday rom-com that you’ll want to cozy up with next to the fire.]]> 368 Alison Cochrun 1982191139 Patty 2 lgbt, read-in-2024, romance
I'm giving it an extra star just because I want f/f romance novels to be a more popular genre. ]]> 3.83 2022 Kiss Her Once for Me
author: Alison Cochrun
name: Patty
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/10
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: lgbt, read-in-2024, romance
review:
Incredibly dumb, tropey nonsense with shallow characterizations and a ridiculous plot.

I'm giving it an extra star just because I want f/f romance novels to be a more popular genre.
]]> <![CDATA[Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity]]> 17987673 352 Prue Shaw 0871407426 Patty 4 4.19 2014 Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity
author: Prue Shaw
name: Patty
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/16
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: historical-nonfiction, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:
One of the better summaries of Dante's biography and the several centuries worth of literary criticism that have accumulated around him written for the general public, but if it's a topic you're interested in, it's probably better just to dive into that academic literary criticism in the first place.
]]> How to Survive in the North 29633670
Luke Healy was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland. He received an MFA in Cartooning from The Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont. His comics work has been published in several anthologies and he has also worked as a coloring assistant with Lucy Knisley on her book Something New.
]]> 197 Luke Healy 1910620068 Patty 4
All three of the stories are captivating, but I'm not sure what the modern-day one was trying to say by paralleling the others. The student was clearly depicted as the aggressor in the relationship with the professor, which is uhhhhh an uncomfortable choice, to say the least. Ada and the captain are way more interesting and sympathetic characters, and I much preferred their stories.

Still, an interesting approach to polar history that I don't regret reading.]]> 3.61 2016 How to Survive in the North
author: Luke Healy
name: Patty
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves: historical-fiction, lgbt, literary-fiction, historical-nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:
A graphic novel that tells three intertwined stories: the (nonfiction) account of the 1912 arctic exploration expedition led by Stefansson, who abandoned his ship when it got stuck in the ice, leading captain Robert Bartlett to make desperate choices for the abandoned sailors to survive; the (nonfiction) account of the 1921 arctic exploration expedition led by Stefansson, when he abandoned an Inuit woman he had hired as a seamstress, Ada Blackjack, on an isolated island for two years, forcing her to face polar bears, loneliness, and a total lack of supplies; and a (fictional) story of a modern, gay college professor who's been put on probation for sleeping with a male student. The art is simple and cartoony, primarily using pink, yellow, and turquoise. The narrative skips between the three timelines without breaks, which is confusing until you note each timeline is associated with a particular shade of the base colors.

All three of the stories are captivating, but I'm not sure what the modern-day one was trying to say by paralleling the others. The student was clearly depicted as the aggressor in the relationship with the professor, which is uhhhhh an uncomfortable choice, to say the least. Ada and the captain are way more interesting and sympathetic characters, and I much preferred their stories.

Still, an interesting approach to polar history that I don't regret reading.
]]> All the White Spaces 58438634
When disaster strikes in Antarctica’s frozen Weddell Sea, the men must take to the land and overwinter somewhere which immediately seems both eerie and wrong; a place not marked on any of their part-drawn maps of the vast white continent. Now completely isolated, Randall’s expedition has no ability to contact the outside world. And no one is coming to rescue them. In the freezing darkness of the Polar night, where the aurora creeps across the sky, something terrible has been waiting to lure them out into its deadly landscape…]]> 368 Ally Wilkes 1982182709 Patty 5
This is SUCH a good book. Just wow. I'm in absolute love with how well it's written. The dynamics between the characters are complicated and tragic and sympathetic and terrible. The monster (for lack of a better word) is an excellent example of cosmic horror, so huge and unknowable and inhuman. The descriptions of the ice fields and aurora australis were gorgeous and haunting and very memorable. My one slight critique is that I felt the beginning was a bit too slow, and it took a while for me to be drawn into the book. But once I was, goddamn! I could not put it down.

Highly recommended. ]]> 3.56 2022 All the White Spaces
author: Ally Wilkes
name: Patty
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/11
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: historical-fiction, horror, lgbt, read-in-2024
review:
Jonathon's two handsome, inspirational, brave brothers died in WWI. Unable to bear living in his parents' grief and expectations (because Jonathon was not born under that name and is not looking forward to wearing dresses and being proper for the rest of his life), Jonathan decides to fulfill his brothers' dream by stowing away on an expedition to discover the South Pole. At first things seem to be going well â€� the clothes and life of a young man suit Jonathon better than anything he'd ever known –Ěýbut problems begin to pile up. And not just the usual misadventures of polar exploration, ships sunk and supplies running low and unendurable cold and so on. Something waits out in the darkness, something inescapable and endless.

This is SUCH a good book. Just wow. I'm in absolute love with how well it's written. The dynamics between the characters are complicated and tragic and sympathetic and terrible. The monster (for lack of a better word) is an excellent example of cosmic horror, so huge and unknowable and inhuman. The descriptions of the ice fields and aurora australis were gorgeous and haunting and very memorable. My one slight critique is that I felt the beginning was a bit too slow, and it took a while for me to be drawn into the book. But once I was, goddamn! I could not put it down.

Highly recommended.
]]> Where the Dead Wait 101161005
Thirteen years later, his second-in-command, Jesse Stevens, has gone missing in the same frozen waters. Perhaps this is Day’s chance to restore his tarnished reputation by bringing Stevens­­—the man who’s haunted his whole life—back home. But when the rescue mission becomes an uncanny journey into his past, Day must face up to the things he’s done.

Abandonment. Betrayal. Cannibalism.

Aboard ship, Day must also contend with unwanted passengers: a reporter obsessively digging up the truth about the first expedition, as well as Stevens’s wife, a spirit-medium whose séances both fascinate and frighten. Following a trail of cryptic messages, gaunt bodies, and old bones, their search becomes more and more unnerving, as it becomes clear that the restless dead are never far behind. Something is coming through.]]> 400 Ally Wilkes 1982182822 Patty 0 to-read 3.18 2023 Where the Dead Wait
author: Ally Wilkes
name: Patty
average rating: 3.18
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[System Collapse (The Murderbot Diaries, #7)]]> 65211701 Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.

Everyone's favorite lethal SecUnit is back.

Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.

But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast.

Yeah, this plan is... not going to work.]]> 245 Martha Wells 1250826977 Patty 5
Oh, yeah, plus there's some creepy caves, an evil corporation, and a bunch of thrilling standoffs. All the good stuff!]]> 4.19 2023 System Collapse (The Murderbot Diaries, #7)
author: Martha Wells
name: Patty
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/02
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: mystery, read-in-2024, science-fiction-fantasy
review:
In this edition to the series, Murderbot must face its toughest challenge yet: PTSD. Proving its emotional bonafides to a bunch of strangers. And producing its own media.

Oh, yeah, plus there's some creepy caves, an evil corporation, and a bunch of thrilling standoffs. All the good stuff!
]]> Smilla's Sense of Snow 124509
It happened in the Copenhagen snow. A six-year-old boy, a Greenlander like Smilla, fell to his death from the top of his apartment building. While the boy's body is still warm, the police pronounce his death an accident. But Smilla knows her young neighbor didn't fall from the roof on his own. Soon she is following a path of clues as clear to her as footsteps in the snow. For her dead neighbor, and for herself, she must embark on a harrowing journey of lies, revelation and violence that will take her back to the world of ice and snow from which she comes, where an explosive secret waits beneath the ice....]]> 480 Peter Høeg 0385315147 Patty 1
The philosophical meditation is pretty much all in the first half of the book, which does feature a lot of musing on ethnic discrimination, colonialism, the troubled marriage of Smilla's parents, lyrical descriptions of Copenhagen in winter, and other such topics. On the other hand, this part is slow. Very slow. About the same speed of glaciers, really. The pace picks up with the plot, discarding any literary pretensions for the sake of incredibly stupid revelations. It's a matter of picking your poison: well-written but boring, or fast-paced but ridiculous? I can't recommend either half.

How was this such a bestseller?]]> 3.77 1992 Smilla's Sense of Snow
author: Peter Høeg
name: Patty
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1992
rating: 1
read at: 2024/08/15
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: literary-fiction, mystery, read-in-2024
review:
A mystery novel billed as half-thriller, half-philosophical meditation. Smilla is a Greenlandic woman living in a subsidized apartment building in Copenhagen: isolated, lonely, depressed, more interested in pure mathematics and the crystals formed in ice than in relationships with other human beings. The one exception is Isaiah, the six-year-old child of her alcoholic neighbor. Smilla and Isaiah form an odd but close bond, both of them missing the Inuit lifestyle they were raised in. Then Isaiah dies, supposedly from falling off the roof of the building, but Smilla suspects that there's more to it than that. She sets out to investigate, eventually uncovering a massive, multimillion dollar conspiracy involving Nazis, radioactive meteorites, alien parasites that threaten to unleash a global plague, and other incredibly dumb and/or cliched mysteries.

The philosophical meditation is pretty much all in the first half of the book, which does feature a lot of musing on ethnic discrimination, colonialism, the troubled marriage of Smilla's parents, lyrical descriptions of Copenhagen in winter, and other such topics. On the other hand, this part is slow. Very slow. About the same speed of glaciers, really. The pace picks up with the plot, discarding any literary pretensions for the sake of incredibly stupid revelations. It's a matter of picking your poison: well-written but boring, or fast-paced but ridiculous? I can't recommend either half.

How was this such a bestseller?
]]> <![CDATA[Doctor Faustus (Signet Classics)]]> 631211
Faustus' story serves as a warning to those who would sacrifice righteous living for earthly gain. But Marlowe's play is also a deeply symbolic analysis of the shift from the late medieval world to the early modern world—a time when the medieval view that the highest wisdom lay in the theologian's contemplations of God was yielding to the Renaissance view that the highest wisdom lay in the scientist's and statesman's rational analysis of the world around them. Caught between these ideals, Faustus is both a tragic fool destroyed by his own ambition and a hero at the forefront of a changing society. In Doctor Faustus, Marlowe thoughtfully examines faith and enlightenment, nature and science—and the terrible cost of the objects of our desire.

This new edition of Marlowe's classic includes a revised Introduction, a history of the play on stage, and an updated bibliography by the editor, Sylvan Barnet of Tufts University. Also included are generous selections from the historic source of Doctor Faustus and illuminating commentaries by Richard B. Sewall, G. K. Hunter, David Bevington and Eric Rasmussen, and John Russell Brown.]]> 210 Christopher Marlowe 0451527798 Patty 4
I've been meaning to read this play for literally decades � as a big Shakespeare fan, of course I need to check out Marlowe. But now I've just added to my tbr, since I should read the Goethe version to compare.

Not the greatest play, but wow does it have its moments.]]> 3.73 1588 Doctor Faustus (Signet Classics)
author: Christopher Marlowe
name: Patty
average rating: 3.73
book published: 1588
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/21
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: literary-fiction, read-in-2024, science-fiction-fantasy
review:
It feels weird to review a classic of Elizabethan drama. What does four stars even mean, in this context? Nevertheless:

I've been meaning to read this play for literally decades � as a big Shakespeare fan, of course I need to check out Marlowe. But now I've just added to my tbr, since I should read the Goethe version to compare.

Not the greatest play, but wow does it have its moments.
]]> <![CDATA[A History of Magic and Witchcraft: Sabbats, Satan and Superstitions in the West]]> 43972581
Blowing away folkloric cobwebs, this enlightening new history dispels many of the misconceptions surrounding witchcraft and magic that we still hold today. From Ancient Greece and Rome through to the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era, historian Frances Timbers shines a light on the impact of Christianity and popular culture in the construction of the figure of the â€witchâ€�. The development of demonology and ceremonial magic is brought together with the West’s troubled past with magic and witchcraft to chart the birth of modern Wiccan and Neopagan movements in England and North America.

Witchcraft is a metaphor for oppression in an age in which persecution is an everyday occurrence somewhere in the world. Fanaticism, intolerance, prejudice, authoritarianism, and religious and political ideologies are never attractive. Beware the witch hunter!]]> 202 Frances Timbers 1526731819 Patty 5
I gotta be honest: the title and cover made me expect a bathroom book –Ěýthe sort of thing that you can open to any page, read a few interesting and gory historical occurrences, and then put back down without having gained any deep insight. But no! This is actually an incredibly well-researched, analyzed, and up-to-date book, one of the very best I've found on the witchcraft trials. Timbers is an academic and that clearly shows in her knowledge and understanding of the topic, but she writes in an engaging way that's easily accessible to the general reader.

Extremely highly recommended. ]]> 3.95 2019 A History of Magic and Witchcraft: Sabbats, Satan and Superstitions in the West
author: Frances Timbers
name: Patty
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/23
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: historical-nonfiction, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:
Nonfiction covering the history of how witches has been theorized and culturally conceived, starting in Ancient Greece and Rome and going all the way up to modern Wicca. However, the bulk of the book is focused on the witch trials of the early modern period.

I gotta be honest: the title and cover made me expect a bathroom book –Ěýthe sort of thing that you can open to any page, read a few interesting and gory historical occurrences, and then put back down without having gained any deep insight. But no! This is actually an incredibly well-researched, analyzed, and up-to-date book, one of the very best I've found on the witchcraft trials. Timbers is an academic and that clearly shows in her knowledge and understanding of the topic, but she writes in an engaging way that's easily accessible to the general reader.

Extremely highly recommended.
]]> <![CDATA[Billy Budd and The Piazza Tales]]> 597308
Largely neglected in his own lifetime, Herman Melville mastered not only the great American novel but also the short story and novella forms. In Billy Budd and The Piazza Tales, Melville reveals an uncanny awareness of the inscrutable nature of reality.



Published posthumously in 1924, Billy Budd is a masterpiece second only to Melville’s Moby-Dick. This complex short novel tells the story of “the handsome sailor� Billy who, provoked by a false charge, accidentally kills the satanic master-at-arms. Unable to defend himself due to a stammer, he is hanged, going willingly to his fate. Although typically ambiguous, Billy Budd is seen by many as a testament to Melville’s ultimate reconciliation with the incongruities and injustices of life.



The Piazza Tales (1856) comprises six short stories, including the perpetually popular “Benito Cereno� and “Bartleby,� a tale of a scrivener who repeatedly distills his mordant criticism of the workplace into the deceptively simple phrase “I would prefer not to.�



Billy Budd
The piazza --
Bartleby --
Benito Cereno --
The lightning-rod man --
The encantadas --
The bell-tower --]]> 384 Herman Melville 1593082533 Patty 5 "Nor even at the risk of meriting the charge of absurdly believing in enchantments, can I restrain the admission that sometimes, even now, when leaving the crowded city to wander out July and August among the Adirondack Mountains, far from the influences of towns and proportionally nigh to the mysterious ones of nature; when at such times I sit me down in the mossy head of some deep-wooded gorge, surrounded by prostrate trunks of blasted pines and recall, as in a dream, my other and far-distant rovings in the baked heart of the charmed isles; and remember the sudden glimpses of dusky shells, and long languid necks protruded from the leafless thickets; and again have beheld the vitreous inland rocks worn down and grooved into deep ruts by ages and ages of the slow draggings of tortoises in quest of pools of scanty water; I can hardly resist the feeling that in my time I have indeed slept upon evilly enchanted ground.

Nay, such is the vividness of my memory, or the magic of my fancy, that I know not whether I am not the occasional victim of optical delusion concerning the Gallipagos. For, often in scenes of social merriment, and especially at revels held by candle-light in old-fashioned mansions, so that shadows are thrown into the further recesses of an angular and spacious room, making them put on a look of haunted undergrowth of lonely woods, I have drawn the attention of my comrades by my fixed gaze and sudden change of air, as I have seemed to see, slowly emerging from those imagined solitudes, and heavily crawling along the floor, the ghost of a gigantic tortoise, with “Memento * * * * *� burning in live letters upon his back."

Hell yeah.

Robert G. O'Meally's introduction, looking Melville as influenced by and influencing in his turn Black Americans, is absolutely amazing and a very different perspective on Melville than one usually sees.]]> 3.83 1924 Billy Budd and The Piazza Tales
author: Herman Melville
name: Patty
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1924
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/15
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: historical-fiction, literary-fiction, read-in-2024
review:
Worth reading just for the piece where Galapagos tortoises are described as uncanny Lovecraftian monsters:
"Nor even at the risk of meriting the charge of absurdly believing in enchantments, can I restrain the admission that sometimes, even now, when leaving the crowded city to wander out July and August among the Adirondack Mountains, far from the influences of towns and proportionally nigh to the mysterious ones of nature; when at such times I sit me down in the mossy head of some deep-wooded gorge, surrounded by prostrate trunks of blasted pines and recall, as in a dream, my other and far-distant rovings in the baked heart of the charmed isles; and remember the sudden glimpses of dusky shells, and long languid necks protruded from the leafless thickets; and again have beheld the vitreous inland rocks worn down and grooved into deep ruts by ages and ages of the slow draggings of tortoises in quest of pools of scanty water; I can hardly resist the feeling that in my time I have indeed slept upon evilly enchanted ground.

Nay, such is the vividness of my memory, or the magic of my fancy, that I know not whether I am not the occasional victim of optical delusion concerning the Gallipagos. For, often in scenes of social merriment, and especially at revels held by candle-light in old-fashioned mansions, so that shadows are thrown into the further recesses of an angular and spacious room, making them put on a look of haunted undergrowth of lonely woods, I have drawn the attention of my comrades by my fixed gaze and sudden change of air, as I have seemed to see, slowly emerging from those imagined solitudes, and heavily crawling along the floor, the ghost of a gigantic tortoise, with “Memento * * * * *� burning in live letters upon his back."

Hell yeah.

Robert G. O'Meally's introduction, looking Melville as influenced by and influencing in his turn Black Americans, is absolutely amazing and a very different perspective on Melville than one usually sees.
]]> <![CDATA[Royal Witches: Witchcraft and the Nobility in Fifteenth-Century England]]> 46158747
Some of these women may have turned to the “dark arts� in order to divine the future or obtain healing potions, but the purpose of the accusations was purely political. Despite their status, these women were vulnerable because of their sex, as the men around them moved them like pawns for political gains.

In Royal Witches, Gemma Hollman explores the lives and the cases of these so-called witches, placing them in the historical context of fifteenth-century England, a setting rife with political upheaval and war. In a time when the line between science and magic was blurred, these trials offer a tantalizing insight into how malicious magic would be used and would later cause such mass hysteria in centuries to come.]]> 320 Gemma Hollman 1643133322 Patty 4 before the age of the witch trials really gets going � in other words, all four of these cases were quite early and unusual. Nonetheless you can see how, over the course of the 1400s, witchcraft is just one among many accusations thrown out to see what sticks to a political opponent, to becoming an effective and relied upon brush with which to tar an enemy.

I would have preferred there to be a bit more theorizing about how witchcraft was conceived, and how it went from a rare crime of the upper nobility to a much more frequent and lower-class accusation in the 1500s and 1600s, but maybe that's asking too much of one book.

A great read if you're interested in this period or under-examined women in history. ]]> 3.74 2019 Royal Witches: Witchcraft and the Nobility in Fifteenth-Century England
author: Gemma Hollman
name: Patty
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/28
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: historical-nonfiction, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:
Nonfiction about four women accused of witchcraft over the 1400s in England. All four of them were rich and powerful (or, well, as rich and powerful as a woman really could be in the middle ages), but were brought down by rumors and/or trials of witchcraft as part of the machinations and backstabbings of the War of the Roses. The interesting thing about these cases is that this is before the age of the witch trials really gets going � in other words, all four of these cases were quite early and unusual. Nonetheless you can see how, over the course of the 1400s, witchcraft is just one among many accusations thrown out to see what sticks to a political opponent, to becoming an effective and relied upon brush with which to tar an enemy.

I would have preferred there to be a bit more theorizing about how witchcraft was conceived, and how it went from a rare crime of the upper nobility to a much more frequent and lower-class accusation in the 1500s and 1600s, but maybe that's asking too much of one book.

A great read if you're interested in this period or under-examined women in history.
]]> <![CDATA[The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World]]> 56587381
The Ruin of All Witches tells the dark, real-life folktale of witch-hunting in a remote Massachusetts plantation. These were the turbulent beginnings of colonial America, when English settlers' dreams of love and liberty, of founding a 'city on a hill', gave way to paranoia and terror, enmity and rage. Drawing on uniquely rich, previously neglected source material, Malcolm Gaskill brings to life a New World existence steeped in the divine and the diabolic, in curses and enchantments, and precariously balanced between life and death.

Through the gripping micro-history of a family tragedy, we glimpse an entire society caught in agonized transition between supernatural obsessions and the age of enlightenment. We see, in short, the birth of the modern world.]]> 336 Malcolm Gaskill 0241413389 Patty 3
It's an interesting historical event, and one that provides a nice example of witchcraft in New England outside of Salem, but I don't think there's enough here to really require an entire book's worth of detail. Ultimately I think this story would have worked much better as an essay or one in a collection of similar cases. ]]> 3.68 2021 The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World
author: Malcolm Gaskill
name: Patty
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/09
date added: 2025/01/14
shelves: historical-nonfiction, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:
Nonfiction about a set of witchcraft trials in the small town of Springfield, Massachusetts in 1651 (pre-Salem!). The drama in this case centered on a troubled marriage, with both husband and wife accusing the other of being a witch and causing the deaths of their children. But larger issues also contribute to the tension –Ěýjealousy over landownership, class conflicts, the town leader being accused of heresy, and more.

It's an interesting historical event, and one that provides a nice example of witchcraft in New England outside of Salem, but I don't think there's enough here to really require an entire book's worth of detail. Ultimately I think this story would have worked much better as an essay or one in a collection of similar cases.
]]> <![CDATA[The White Ship: Conquest, Anarchy and the Wrecking of Henry I’s Dream]]> 53604802
In 1120, the White Ship was known as the fastest ship afloat. When it sank sailing from Normandy to England it was carrying aboard the only legitimate heir to King Henry I, William Ætheling. The raucous, arrogant young prince had made a party of the voyage, carousing with his companions and pushing wine into the eager hands of the crew. It was the middle of the night when the drunken helmsman rammed the ship into rocks.

The next day only one of the three hundred who had boarded the ship was alive to describe the horrors of the slow shipwreck. William, the face of England’s future had drowned along with scores of the social elite. The royal line severed and with no obvious heir to the crown, a civil war of untold violence erupted. Known fittingly as â€The Anarchyâ€�, this game of thrones saw families turned in on each other, with English barons, rebellious Welsh leaders and Scottish invaders all playing a part in the bloody, desperate scrum for power.

One incredible shipwreck and two decades of violent uncertainty; England’s course had changed forever.]]> 304 Charles Spencer 0008296804 Patty 5 3.99 2020 The White Ship: Conquest, Anarchy and the Wrecking of Henry I’s Dream
author: Charles Spencer
name: Patty
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/11
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: historical-nonfiction, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age]]> 19802 322 William Manchester 0316545562 Patty 1
It is not.

By only five pages in, and you encounter claims such as "barbaric German tribes, some of them tamer than others but all envious of the empire's prosperity", "feral packs of mounted Hsiung-nu, or Huns. Ignorant of agriculture but expert archers, bred to kill and trained from infancy to be pitiless, these dreaded warriors from the plains of Mongolia had turned war into an industry. [...] It was Europe's misfortune that early in the fourth century the Huns had met their masters at China's Great Wall", "In 400 the Visigoth Alaric, a relatively enlightened chieftain and a zealous religieux", "the Huns under their terrible new chieftain Attila � who had seized power by murdering his brother", and "In the years that followed, Goths, Alans, Burgundians, Thuringians, Frisians, Gepidae, Suevi, Alemanni, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Lombards, Heruli, Quadi, and Magyars joined them in ravaging what was left of civilization."

And then! The crowning achievement (of, again, only the first five pages): "The ethnic tide then settled in its conquered lands and darkness descended upon the devastated, unstable continent."

The rest of the book continues to be terrible and wrong about literally everything.

Manchester even manages to invent new levels of wrongness! Not only does he repeat that old mistake about medieval people using spices to cover the taste of spoiled meat, he goes a step farther: "The Spanish court was less than ecstatic. It had wanted Magellan to hoist its flag over the Moluccas, thereby breaking Portugal's monopoly of the Oriental spice trade: cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and pepper. Spices made valuable preservatives, but trafficking in them had other, sinister implications. They were also used, and used more often, to disguise the odors and the ugly taste of spoiled meat. The regimes that encouraged and supported the spice trade were, in effect, accomplices in the poisoning of their own people. Moreover, medieval Europeans were extremely vulnerable to disease. This was the down side of exploration."

Sure! The downside! Also... Charles V* is apparently planning to murder every peasant in Spain? Why not. An excellent royal policy.

*What's that you say? Charles V (1500-1551) is NOT medieval? Oh, sweet summer child. That is so the least of the problems with this book. He has no idea what time period he's talking about; he's cited examples of stuff all the way up to the 1700s.

After that, the reader hits some terrible sex scene!s But first, some of Manchester's other thoughts on sexuality in the "middle" ages:
Typically, news of an imminent marriage spread when the pregnancy of the bride-elect began to show. If she had been particularly user-friendly, raising genuine doubts about the child's paternity, those who had enjoyed her favors drew straws."

Even before she had reached her teens, a girl knew that unless she married before she was twenty-one, society would consider her useless, fit only for the nunnery, or, in England, the spinning wheel (a "spinster"). Hence the yearning of female adolescents for the altar. Getting pregnant was one way to reach it. On Sundays, under watchful parental eyes, girls would dress modestly and be demure in church, but on weekdays they opened their blouses, hiked their skirts, and romped through the fields in pursuit of phalli.

If the lover of a soon-to-be unwed mother decided he was not ready for marriage, her cause was not necessarily lost; often an attractive girl with a fatherless child and a long record of indiscretions could find a respectable peasant willing to take her to the altar.

If a peasant girl was not pregnant, there were only two practical deterrents to her acceptance of a marriage proposal. It was her desire either to enter a convent or, at the far end of the spectrum, to join the world's oldest profession. Harlotry not only paid well; it was frequently prestigious. Because prostitutes had to expose their entire bodies, they were the cleanest people in Europe. The competition was fierce, but it always had been, and once established, these women became what were now being called courtesans, or females courtiers.

The sex scene is terrible, but is it true? Don't worry, Manchester is here to reassure us: "So many bizarre stories have been handed down about this hot-blooded Spanish family [the Borgias] that it is impossible, after five centuries, to know where the line of credibility should be drawn. Much of what we have is simply what was accepted as fact at the time. However, a substantial part of the legend was documented � enough to set it down here with confidence that, however extraordinary it may seem now, what was believed then was, in the main, undoubtedly true."

With that established, here you go!
Rodrigo Lanzol y Borgia, to give him his full name � it was Borja y Doms in Spain � had been elevated to the College of Cardinals by Pope Calixtus III, his uncle. That was in 1456. No sooner had he donned his red hat than he had removed it, together with the rest of his raiment, for a marathon romp with a succession of women whose identity is unknown to us and may well have been unknown to him.
This performance produced a son and two daughters, who were later joined, when he was in his forties, by another daughter and three more sons. We know the putative mother of this second family. She was Rosa Vannozza dei Catanei, the precocious child of one of his favorite mistresses. Roman lore has it that he was coupling with the older woman when he was distracted by the sight of her adolescent daughter lying beside them, naked, thighs yawning wide, matching her mother thrust for pelvic thrust, but with a rhythmic rotation of the hips which so intrigued the cardinal that he switched partners in midstroke.
Borgia's enjoyment of the flesh was enhanced when the woman beneath him was married, particularly if he had presided at her wedding. Breaking any commandment excited him, but he was partial to the seventh. As priest he married Rosa to two men. She may actually have slept with her husbands from time to time � since Borgia always kept a stable of women, she was allowed an occasional night off to indulge her own sexual preferences � but her duties lay in his eminence's bed. Then, at the age of fifty-nine, he yearned for a more nubile partner. His parting with Rosa was affectionate."

This book is apparently taught in high schools as a legitimate source.

After moving past the chapter on sex (hooray? Unfortunately?), and the reader encounters William Manchester's Takes on Medieval Philosophy. It's... it's a lot.

First! Did you know literature was rare? "Volumes had been expensive, and unprofitable for writers, who, unprotected by copyright, lived on pensions or papal grants, in monastic orders, or by teaching."
Ah, yes, copyright. Truly the sole thing keeping medieval writers from financial success.

But what did people study at universities? "Heavy emphasis on animism and Scholasticism. Animists believed that every material form of reality possessed a soul � not only plants and stones, but even such natural phenomena as earthquakes and thunderstorms. Scholastics sought to replace all forms of philosophy with Catholic theology. Both were shadowy disciplines."
That's... not what Scholasticism means, but whatever, I'm much more impressed with the idea of pantheistic medieval universities! Did Manchester take a wild stab at what Neo-Platonism means and came up with this incredible fantasy AU? Perhaps!

How about that important very medieval figure, Martin Luther?
"He was also the most anal of theologians. In part, this derived from the natural character of the Reich. A later mot had it that the Englishman's sense of humor is in the drawing room, the Frenchman's sense of humor is in the bedroom, and the German's sense of humor is in the bathroom. For Luther the bathroom was also a place of worship. His holiest moments often came when he was seated on the privy (Abort) in a Wittenberg monastery tower. It was there, while moving his bowels, that he conceived the revolutionary Protestant doctrine of justification by faith. Afterward he wrote: "These words 'just' and 'justice of God' were a thunderbolt to my conscience .... I soon had the thought [that] God's justice ought to be the salvation of every believer .... Therefore it is God's justice which justifies us and saves us. And these words became a sweeter message for me. This knowledge the Holy Spirit gave me on the privy in the tower."
Holy insane take, Manchester! But don't worry � he will spend many pages detailing every single time Luther calls someone an asshole or a shit or a fart, because he is really into his anal interpretation.

Despite this, he is mostly pro-Luther, though he describes him this way: "The monk in Wittenberg [Luther] was by nature everything the scholar in Louvain [Erasmus] asked him not to be: inflammatory, passionate, seditious, hot, furious, and a born hater."
Martin Luther: labelled BORN HATED by bad historians everywhere!

Manchester is also weirdly pro-Savonarola, by the way. Not often a take I see with people born post-1750.

Dance break for a random and highly bizarre metaphor:
"the motives of both have been muddied, as often happens when romance rears its violin-shaped head."

After over a hundred pages without a weird sex scene, luckily Anne Boleyn appears on the scene for Manchester to libel and drool over.
"It was her sexuality which had attracted Henry to her. The Boleyn woman were noted for their libidos; both Anne's mother and her older sister had slipped naked into the king's bed, to his subsequent delight, but her lovemaking skills eclipsed theirs. To him this wanton girl seemed built to breed. [...] What he did not know � then � was that despite her youth she was as experienced as he was. Before she seduced him, her many lovers had included the poet Thomas Wyatt and Henry Percy, the future Earl of Northumberland. Even in what one historian of Hampton Court describes as "exceedingly corrupt court revels", she was notoriously available to both single and married courtiers. [...] Once on the throne she seemed to change personality. Her gaiety vanished and was replaced by temper tantrums, sharp-tongued imperiousness, and innumerable petty demands which left the king exasperated. Catherine at least had been gentle, and he began to miss that. [...] Anne was the last wife in England entitled to protest her husband's dalliance. According to sworn testimony, she had scarcely recovered from her daughter's birth when she began taking lovers, and her intrigues continued through her three-year marriage. If a youth aroused her desire, witnesses declared, she would invite him to her bedchamber by dropping a handkerchief at his feet; if he picked it up and wiped his face, her proposition had been accepted, and her personal maid would be alerted to his arrival that evening at midnight."
Manchester, unsurprisingly, also takes seriously the accusation that Anne committed incest with her brother.

The last section of the book is all about Magellan, because he is apparently the sole individual responsible for ending the Dark Ages and returning literacy and happiness to the world.
A description of Manchester's Fave Historical Figure: "Physically Magellan is unimpressive. He was born to one of the lower orders of Portuguese nobility, but his physique is that of a peasant � short, swart, with a low center of gravity. His skin is leathery, his black beard bushy, and his eyes large, sad, and brooding. [...] There is a hidden side to this seasoned skipper which would astonish his men. He is imaginative, a dreamer; in a time of blackguards and brutes he believes in heroism."
Oh, right, I forgot to mention that for some reason Manchester switches to present tense once he starts writing about Magellan. It is very weird and confusing.

So, how did Magellan change the world? "Finally, the exploration of lands beyond Europe � of which Magellan's voyage was to be the culmination � opened the entire world, thus introducing the modern age. The discoveries also undermined pontifical dogma on the character of the globe, introducing yet another threat to papal prestige. One of Rome's oldest arguments was that the Church's teachings must be true because everyone believed in the divinity of Christ. That had been plausible in the Middle Ages, but now, as reports poured in from navigators, travelers, conquistadores, and even missionaries, Europeans realized that other religions flourished in newly discovered lands, and those who worshipped alien gods there appeared to be none the worse for it."
The Middle Ages: famously unaware of Jews, Muslims, heretics, and various pagan groups.

Despite being Magellan's biggest fanboy, Manchester is a British historian, and thus has to get in a dig at those icky not-English countries: "It is a remarkable fact that virtually all of them [the early explorers] came from one corner of Europe. Portugal and Spain had contributed little to Western civilization before then. In the five centuries since then they have produced several brillant artists; apart from that, their achievements have been less than awesome."
Yooooo, Iberia, you feel that BURN????

But is there weird sex stuff in the Magellan chapter? Of course there's weird sex stuff in the Magellan chapter!
"They [Magellan's sailors] were mostly young, and after two weeks of rest and a restorative diet they felt virile. None had known female companionship since leaving Brazil at the end of 1519, five seasons earlier. Even if the girls on Cebu had been sheathed in Mother Hubbards, the crews' discipline would have yielded to lust. As it was, by custom only married women wore clothing. The youths were surrounded by naked, nubile maidens who stirred uncontrollable desire in sailors who had been raised in a society which regarded nudity as prurient. The proximity of the sexes provided maximum temptation, the dense jungle offered maximum opportunity, and the predictable result was a saturnalia. The men ran wild. Afterward they said that the Filipino maidens preferred white lovers, finding them exotic and more vigorous than native boys. Of course, that was what they would say. Yet there has never been any suggestion that their advances were resisted. Apparently the apposition of the two cultures created a powerful sexual tension. The crewmen, being Christians, were afflicted with a sense of sin which increased their carnal appetites, while the guiltless, innocent girls enjoyed wanton tumbles beneath the banyans and, afterward, the gift of a mirror, a bracelet, a bangle, or a knife."
Gonna need a citation for every single sentence of that other than "Manchester's fevered imaginings".

The book ends with a pean to Magellan that includes the world's strangest definition of heroism: "He was not the wisest man of his time. Erasmus was. Neither was he the most gifted. That, surely, was Leonardo. But Magellan became what, as a child, he had yearned to be � the era's greatest hero. The reason is intricate, but important to understand. Heroism is often confused with physical courage. In fact the two are very different. There was nothing heroic about Magellan's death. He went into that last darkness a seasoned campaigner, accompanied by his own men, and he was completely fearless because as he drew his last breath he believed � indeed knew � that paradise was imminent. Similarly, the solider who throws himself on a live grenade, surrendering his life to save his comrades, may be awarded the medal of honor. Nevertheless his deed, being impulsive, is actually unheroic. Such acts, no more reflective than the swift withdrawal of a blistered hand from a red-hot stove, are involuntary. Heroism is the exact opposite � always deliberate, never mindless.
Neither, if it is valor of the first water, may it be part of a group endeavor. All movements, including armies, provide their participants with such tremendous support that pursuit of common goals, despite great risk, is little more than ardent conformity. [...] The hero acts alone, without encouragement, relying solely on conviction and his own inner resources. Shames does not discourage him; neither does obloquy. [...] Guided by an inner gyroscope, he pursues his vision single-mindedly, undiscouraged by rejection, defeat, or even the prospect of imminent death. Few men can even comprehend such fortitude. Virtually all crave some external incentive: the appreciation of peers, the possibility of exculpation, the promise of retroactive affection, the hope of rewards, applause, decorations � of emotional reparations in some form. Because these longings are completely normal, only a man with towering strength of character can suppress them.
In the long lists of history it is difficult to find another figure whose heroism matches Magellan's. [...]His character was, of course, imperfect. But heroes need not be admirable, and indeed most have not been. [...] Yet their flaws, though deplorable, are irrelevant; in the end their heroism shines through untarnished. Had Ferdinand Magellan met Jesus Christ, the Galilean might have felt a pang of disappointment � which the capitán-general might have shared � but Magellan, like Christ, was also a hero. He still is. He always will be."
If you don't write about your own Fave Historical Figure literally meeting Jesus and being declared awesome by him, can you really call yourself a fan? These are the questions Manchester leaves the reader to ponder.]]> 3.83 1992 A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of an Age
author: William Manchester
name: Patty
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1992
rating: 1
read at: 2024/09/28
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: historical-nonfiction, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:
I'd heard this book described by multiple sources as a great understanding of the medieval/renaissance mindset and culture.

It is not.

By only five pages in, and you encounter claims such as "barbaric German tribes, some of them tamer than others but all envious of the empire's prosperity", "feral packs of mounted Hsiung-nu, or Huns. Ignorant of agriculture but expert archers, bred to kill and trained from infancy to be pitiless, these dreaded warriors from the plains of Mongolia had turned war into an industry. [...] It was Europe's misfortune that early in the fourth century the Huns had met their masters at China's Great Wall", "In 400 the Visigoth Alaric, a relatively enlightened chieftain and a zealous religieux", "the Huns under their terrible new chieftain Attila � who had seized power by murdering his brother", and "In the years that followed, Goths, Alans, Burgundians, Thuringians, Frisians, Gepidae, Suevi, Alemanni, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Lombards, Heruli, Quadi, and Magyars joined them in ravaging what was left of civilization."

And then! The crowning achievement (of, again, only the first five pages): "The ethnic tide then settled in its conquered lands and darkness descended upon the devastated, unstable continent."

The rest of the book continues to be terrible and wrong about literally everything.

Manchester even manages to invent new levels of wrongness! Not only does he repeat that old mistake about medieval people using spices to cover the taste of spoiled meat, he goes a step farther: "The Spanish court was less than ecstatic. It had wanted Magellan to hoist its flag over the Moluccas, thereby breaking Portugal's monopoly of the Oriental spice trade: cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and pepper. Spices made valuable preservatives, but trafficking in them had other, sinister implications. They were also used, and used more often, to disguise the odors and the ugly taste of spoiled meat. The regimes that encouraged and supported the spice trade were, in effect, accomplices in the poisoning of their own people. Moreover, medieval Europeans were extremely vulnerable to disease. This was the down side of exploration."

Sure! The downside! Also... Charles V* is apparently planning to murder every peasant in Spain? Why not. An excellent royal policy.

*What's that you say? Charles V (1500-1551) is NOT medieval? Oh, sweet summer child. That is so the least of the problems with this book. He has no idea what time period he's talking about; he's cited examples of stuff all the way up to the 1700s.

After that, the reader hits some terrible sex scene!s But first, some of Manchester's other thoughts on sexuality in the "middle" ages:
Typically, news of an imminent marriage spread when the pregnancy of the bride-elect began to show. If she had been particularly user-friendly, raising genuine doubts about the child's paternity, those who had enjoyed her favors drew straws."

Even before she had reached her teens, a girl knew that unless she married before she was twenty-one, society would consider her useless, fit only for the nunnery, or, in England, the spinning wheel (a "spinster"). Hence the yearning of female adolescents for the altar. Getting pregnant was one way to reach it. On Sundays, under watchful parental eyes, girls would dress modestly and be demure in church, but on weekdays they opened their blouses, hiked their skirts, and romped through the fields in pursuit of phalli.

If the lover of a soon-to-be unwed mother decided he was not ready for marriage, her cause was not necessarily lost; often an attractive girl with a fatherless child and a long record of indiscretions could find a respectable peasant willing to take her to the altar.

If a peasant girl was not pregnant, there were only two practical deterrents to her acceptance of a marriage proposal. It was her desire either to enter a convent or, at the far end of the spectrum, to join the world's oldest profession. Harlotry not only paid well; it was frequently prestigious. Because prostitutes had to expose their entire bodies, they were the cleanest people in Europe. The competition was fierce, but it always had been, and once established, these women became what were now being called courtesans, or females courtiers.

The sex scene is terrible, but is it true? Don't worry, Manchester is here to reassure us: "So many bizarre stories have been handed down about this hot-blooded Spanish family [the Borgias] that it is impossible, after five centuries, to know where the line of credibility should be drawn. Much of what we have is simply what was accepted as fact at the time. However, a substantial part of the legend was documented � enough to set it down here with confidence that, however extraordinary it may seem now, what was believed then was, in the main, undoubtedly true."

With that established, here you go!
Rodrigo Lanzol y Borgia, to give him his full name � it was Borja y Doms in Spain � had been elevated to the College of Cardinals by Pope Calixtus III, his uncle. That was in 1456. No sooner had he donned his red hat than he had removed it, together with the rest of his raiment, for a marathon romp with a succession of women whose identity is unknown to us and may well have been unknown to him.
This performance produced a son and two daughters, who were later joined, when he was in his forties, by another daughter and three more sons. We know the putative mother of this second family. She was Rosa Vannozza dei Catanei, the precocious child of one of his favorite mistresses. Roman lore has it that he was coupling with the older woman when he was distracted by the sight of her adolescent daughter lying beside them, naked, thighs yawning wide, matching her mother thrust for pelvic thrust, but with a rhythmic rotation of the hips which so intrigued the cardinal that he switched partners in midstroke.
Borgia's enjoyment of the flesh was enhanced when the woman beneath him was married, particularly if he had presided at her wedding. Breaking any commandment excited him, but he was partial to the seventh. As priest he married Rosa to two men. She may actually have slept with her husbands from time to time � since Borgia always kept a stable of women, she was allowed an occasional night off to indulge her own sexual preferences � but her duties lay in his eminence's bed. Then, at the age of fifty-nine, he yearned for a more nubile partner. His parting with Rosa was affectionate."

This book is apparently taught in high schools as a legitimate source.

After moving past the chapter on sex (hooray? Unfortunately?), and the reader encounters William Manchester's Takes on Medieval Philosophy. It's... it's a lot.

First! Did you know literature was rare? "Volumes had been expensive, and unprofitable for writers, who, unprotected by copyright, lived on pensions or papal grants, in monastic orders, or by teaching."
Ah, yes, copyright. Truly the sole thing keeping medieval writers from financial success.

But what did people study at universities? "Heavy emphasis on animism and Scholasticism. Animists believed that every material form of reality possessed a soul � not only plants and stones, but even such natural phenomena as earthquakes and thunderstorms. Scholastics sought to replace all forms of philosophy with Catholic theology. Both were shadowy disciplines."
That's... not what Scholasticism means, but whatever, I'm much more impressed with the idea of pantheistic medieval universities! Did Manchester take a wild stab at what Neo-Platonism means and came up with this incredible fantasy AU? Perhaps!

How about that important very medieval figure, Martin Luther?
"He was also the most anal of theologians. In part, this derived from the natural character of the Reich. A later mot had it that the Englishman's sense of humor is in the drawing room, the Frenchman's sense of humor is in the bedroom, and the German's sense of humor is in the bathroom. For Luther the bathroom was also a place of worship. His holiest moments often came when he was seated on the privy (Abort) in a Wittenberg monastery tower. It was there, while moving his bowels, that he conceived the revolutionary Protestant doctrine of justification by faith. Afterward he wrote: "These words 'just' and 'justice of God' were a thunderbolt to my conscience .... I soon had the thought [that] God's justice ought to be the salvation of every believer .... Therefore it is God's justice which justifies us and saves us. And these words became a sweeter message for me. This knowledge the Holy Spirit gave me on the privy in the tower."
Holy insane take, Manchester! But don't worry � he will spend many pages detailing every single time Luther calls someone an asshole or a shit or a fart, because he is really into his anal interpretation.

Despite this, he is mostly pro-Luther, though he describes him this way: "The monk in Wittenberg [Luther] was by nature everything the scholar in Louvain [Erasmus] asked him not to be: inflammatory, passionate, seditious, hot, furious, and a born hater."
Martin Luther: labelled BORN HATED by bad historians everywhere!

Manchester is also weirdly pro-Savonarola, by the way. Not often a take I see with people born post-1750.

Dance break for a random and highly bizarre metaphor:
"the motives of both have been muddied, as often happens when romance rears its violin-shaped head."

After over a hundred pages without a weird sex scene, luckily Anne Boleyn appears on the scene for Manchester to libel and drool over.
"It was her sexuality which had attracted Henry to her. The Boleyn woman were noted for their libidos; both Anne's mother and her older sister had slipped naked into the king's bed, to his subsequent delight, but her lovemaking skills eclipsed theirs. To him this wanton girl seemed built to breed. [...] What he did not know � then � was that despite her youth she was as experienced as he was. Before she seduced him, her many lovers had included the poet Thomas Wyatt and Henry Percy, the future Earl of Northumberland. Even in what one historian of Hampton Court describes as "exceedingly corrupt court revels", she was notoriously available to both single and married courtiers. [...] Once on the throne she seemed to change personality. Her gaiety vanished and was replaced by temper tantrums, sharp-tongued imperiousness, and innumerable petty demands which left the king exasperated. Catherine at least had been gentle, and he began to miss that. [...] Anne was the last wife in England entitled to protest her husband's dalliance. According to sworn testimony, she had scarcely recovered from her daughter's birth when she began taking lovers, and her intrigues continued through her three-year marriage. If a youth aroused her desire, witnesses declared, she would invite him to her bedchamber by dropping a handkerchief at his feet; if he picked it up and wiped his face, her proposition had been accepted, and her personal maid would be alerted to his arrival that evening at midnight."
Manchester, unsurprisingly, also takes seriously the accusation that Anne committed incest with her brother.

The last section of the book is all about Magellan, because he is apparently the sole individual responsible for ending the Dark Ages and returning literacy and happiness to the world.
A description of Manchester's Fave Historical Figure: "Physically Magellan is unimpressive. He was born to one of the lower orders of Portuguese nobility, but his physique is that of a peasant � short, swart, with a low center of gravity. His skin is leathery, his black beard bushy, and his eyes large, sad, and brooding. [...] There is a hidden side to this seasoned skipper which would astonish his men. He is imaginative, a dreamer; in a time of blackguards and brutes he believes in heroism."
Oh, right, I forgot to mention that for some reason Manchester switches to present tense once he starts writing about Magellan. It is very weird and confusing.

So, how did Magellan change the world? "Finally, the exploration of lands beyond Europe � of which Magellan's voyage was to be the culmination � opened the entire world, thus introducing the modern age. The discoveries also undermined pontifical dogma on the character of the globe, introducing yet another threat to papal prestige. One of Rome's oldest arguments was that the Church's teachings must be true because everyone believed in the divinity of Christ. That had been plausible in the Middle Ages, but now, as reports poured in from navigators, travelers, conquistadores, and even missionaries, Europeans realized that other religions flourished in newly discovered lands, and those who worshipped alien gods there appeared to be none the worse for it."
The Middle Ages: famously unaware of Jews, Muslims, heretics, and various pagan groups.

Despite being Magellan's biggest fanboy, Manchester is a British historian, and thus has to get in a dig at those icky not-English countries: "It is a remarkable fact that virtually all of them [the early explorers] came from one corner of Europe. Portugal and Spain had contributed little to Western civilization before then. In the five centuries since then they have produced several brillant artists; apart from that, their achievements have been less than awesome."
Yooooo, Iberia, you feel that BURN????

But is there weird sex stuff in the Magellan chapter? Of course there's weird sex stuff in the Magellan chapter!
"They [Magellan's sailors] were mostly young, and after two weeks of rest and a restorative diet they felt virile. None had known female companionship since leaving Brazil at the end of 1519, five seasons earlier. Even if the girls on Cebu had been sheathed in Mother Hubbards, the crews' discipline would have yielded to lust. As it was, by custom only married women wore clothing. The youths were surrounded by naked, nubile maidens who stirred uncontrollable desire in sailors who had been raised in a society which regarded nudity as prurient. The proximity of the sexes provided maximum temptation, the dense jungle offered maximum opportunity, and the predictable result was a saturnalia. The men ran wild. Afterward they said that the Filipino maidens preferred white lovers, finding them exotic and more vigorous than native boys. Of course, that was what they would say. Yet there has never been any suggestion that their advances were resisted. Apparently the apposition of the two cultures created a powerful sexual tension. The crewmen, being Christians, were afflicted with a sense of sin which increased their carnal appetites, while the guiltless, innocent girls enjoyed wanton tumbles beneath the banyans and, afterward, the gift of a mirror, a bracelet, a bangle, or a knife."
Gonna need a citation for every single sentence of that other than "Manchester's fevered imaginings".

The book ends with a pean to Magellan that includes the world's strangest definition of heroism: "He was not the wisest man of his time. Erasmus was. Neither was he the most gifted. That, surely, was Leonardo. But Magellan became what, as a child, he had yearned to be � the era's greatest hero. The reason is intricate, but important to understand. Heroism is often confused with physical courage. In fact the two are very different. There was nothing heroic about Magellan's death. He went into that last darkness a seasoned campaigner, accompanied by his own men, and he was completely fearless because as he drew his last breath he believed � indeed knew � that paradise was imminent. Similarly, the solider who throws himself on a live grenade, surrendering his life to save his comrades, may be awarded the medal of honor. Nevertheless his deed, being impulsive, is actually unheroic. Such acts, no more reflective than the swift withdrawal of a blistered hand from a red-hot stove, are involuntary. Heroism is the exact opposite � always deliberate, never mindless.
Neither, if it is valor of the first water, may it be part of a group endeavor. All movements, including armies, provide their participants with such tremendous support that pursuit of common goals, despite great risk, is little more than ardent conformity. [...] The hero acts alone, without encouragement, relying solely on conviction and his own inner resources. Shames does not discourage him; neither does obloquy. [...] Guided by an inner gyroscope, he pursues his vision single-mindedly, undiscouraged by rejection, defeat, or even the prospect of imminent death. Few men can even comprehend such fortitude. Virtually all crave some external incentive: the appreciation of peers, the possibility of exculpation, the promise of retroactive affection, the hope of rewards, applause, decorations � of emotional reparations in some form. Because these longings are completely normal, only a man with towering strength of character can suppress them.
In the long lists of history it is difficult to find another figure whose heroism matches Magellan's. [...]His character was, of course, imperfect. But heroes need not be admirable, and indeed most have not been. [...] Yet their flaws, though deplorable, are irrelevant; in the end their heroism shines through untarnished. Had Ferdinand Magellan met Jesus Christ, the Galilean might have felt a pang of disappointment � which the capitán-general might have shared � but Magellan, like Christ, was also a hero. He still is. He always will be."
If you don't write about your own Fave Historical Figure literally meeting Jesus and being declared awesome by him, can you really call yourself a fan? These are the questions Manchester leaves the reader to ponder.
]]> The King in Yellow 32277642 The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers is a masterful collection of short stories that will transport you to a realm of eerie mystery, madness, and supernatural horror, where the boundaries between reality and the unknown are blurred.

The book is named after a play with the same title which recurs as a motif through some of the stories. The first half of the book features highly esteemed weird stories, and the book has been described by critics such as E. F. Bleiler, S. T. Joshi and T. E. D. Klein as a classic in the field of the supernatural. There are ten stories, the first four of which ("The Repairer of Reputations", "The Mask", "In the Court of the Dragon", and "The Yellow Sign") mention The King in Yellow, a forbidden play which induces despair or madness in those who read it. "The Yellow Sign" inspired a film of the same name released in 2001.

Stories:
- The Repairer of Reputations
- The Mask
- In the Court of the Dragon
- The Yellow Sign
- The Demoiselle D'ys
- The Prophets' Paradise
- The Street of the Four Winds
- The Street of the First Shell
- The Street of Our Lady of the Fields
- Rue Barree]]> 224 Robert W. Chambers 153905344X Patty 4
The King in Yellow is actually a collection of short stories; the first four are the reason why people still read any of them. Each features an encounter with "The King in Yellow" â€� a play that drives anyone who reads it insane –Ěýand "lost Carcosa", a mysterious city that might be on another planet. These stories were surprisingly good. I found them genuinely scary and evocatively written, which is not always the case for me with early cosmic horror. The stories I've read by Lovecraft or Algernon Blackwood I appreciate more for their historical influence than their actual skill. But not here! These are some actually great pieces.

The next two stories (or rather, one story and a poem) also feature ghosts and other creepy themes, but don't seem to be linked to the specific Carcosa mythology.

The final four stories have no fantastic elements at all, and are mostly romances about artistic Americans living the bohemian life in contemporary Paris. They're all fine, pleasant and amusing, but do seem like a strange fit with the first half of the book.]]> 3.58 1895 The King in Yellow
author: Robert W. Chambers
name: Patty
average rating: 3.58
book published: 1895
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/04
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: historical-fiction, horror, read-in-2024
review:
I finally got around to reading this classic of early cosmic horror!

The King in Yellow is actually a collection of short stories; the first four are the reason why people still read any of them. Each features an encounter with "The King in Yellow" â€� a play that drives anyone who reads it insane –Ěýand "lost Carcosa", a mysterious city that might be on another planet. These stories were surprisingly good. I found them genuinely scary and evocatively written, which is not always the case for me with early cosmic horror. The stories I've read by Lovecraft or Algernon Blackwood I appreciate more for their historical influence than their actual skill. But not here! These are some actually great pieces.

The next two stories (or rather, one story and a poem) also feature ghosts and other creepy themes, but don't seem to be linked to the specific Carcosa mythology.

The final four stories have no fantastic elements at all, and are mostly romances about artistic Americans living the bohemian life in contemporary Paris. They're all fine, pleasant and amusing, but do seem like a strange fit with the first half of the book.
]]> <![CDATA[The Golden Day: A Study in American Literature and Culture]]> 4454182
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.

We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.]]> 144 Lewis Mumford 0313238456 Patty 4 4.00 2015 The Golden Day: A Study in American Literature and Culture
author: Lewis Mumford
name: Patty
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/07
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: historical-nonfiction, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The World Before Us: How Science is Revealing a New Story of Our Human Origins]]> 56233220 'Fascinating and entertaining. If you read one book on human origins, this should be it' Ian Morris, author of Why the West Rules - For Now

'The who, what, where, when and how of human evolution, from one of the world's experts on the dating of prehistoric fossils' Steve Brusatte, author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs

50,000 years ago, we were not the only species of human in the world. There were at least four others, including the Neanderthals, Homo floresiensis, Homo luzonesis and the Denisovans. At the forefront of the latter's ground-breaking discovery was Oxford Professor Tom Higham. In The World Before Us, he explains the scientific and technological advancements - in radiocarbon dating and ancient DNA, for example - that allowed each of these discoveries to be made, enabling us to be more accurate in our predictions about not just how long ago these other humans lived, but how they lived, interacted and live on in our genes today. This is the story of us, told for the first time with its full cast of characters.

'The application of new genetic science to pre-history is analogous to how the telescope transformed astronomy. Tom Higham brings us to the frontier of recent discoveries with a book that is both gripping and fun' Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion

'This exciting book shows that we now have a revolutionary new tool for reconstructing the human past: DNA from minute pieces of tooth and bone, and even from the dirt on the floor of caves' David Abulafia, author of The Boundless Sea

'The remarkable new science of palaeoanthropology, from lab bench to trench' Rebecca Wragg Sykes, author of Kindred

'Higham's thrilling account makes readers feel as if they were participating themselves in the extraordinary series of events that in the last few years has revealed our long-lost cousins' David Reich, author of Who We Are and How We Got Here

'A brilliant distillation of the ideas and discoveries revolutionising our understanding of human evolution' Chris Gosden, author of The History of Magic]]> 320 Tom Higham Patty 0 to-read 4.31 2021 The World Before Us: How Science is Revealing a New Story of Our Human Origins
author: Tom Higham
name: Patty
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Route of Ice and Salt 50900650 A reimagining of Dracula’s voyage to England, filled with Gothic imagery and queer desire.

It’s an ordinary assignment, nothing more. The cargo? Fifty boxes filled with Transylvanian soil. The route? From Varna to Whitby. The Demeter has made many trips like this. The captain has handled dozens of crews.

He dreams familiar dreams: to taste the salt on the skin of his men, to run his hands across their chests. He longs for the warmth of a lover he cannot have, fantasizes about flesh and frenzied embraces. All this he’s done before, it’s routine, a constant, like the tides.

Yet there’s something different, something wrong. There are odd nightmares, unsettling omens and fear. For there is something in the air, something in the night, someone stalking the ship.

The cult vampire novella by Mexican author José Luis Zárate is available for the first time in English. Translated by David Bowles and with an accompanying essay by noted horror author Poppy Z. Brite, it reveals an unknown corner of Latin American literature.]]> 143 José Luis Zárate Patty 5 3.57 1998 The Route of Ice and Salt
author: José Luis Zárate
name: Patty
average rating: 3.57
book published: 1998
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: historical-fiction, horror, literary-fiction, lgbt, poc-author, read-in-2023
review:

]]> The Devourers 27245999
From these documents spills the chronicle of a race of people at once more than human yet kin to beasts, ruled by instincts and desires blood-deep and ages-old. The tale features a rough wanderer in seventeenth-century Mughal India who finds himself irrevocably drawn to a defiant woman—and destined to be torn asunder by two clashing worlds. With every passing chapter of beauty and brutality, Alok’s interest in the stranger grows and evolves into something darker and more urgent.]]> 306 Indra Das 110196751X Patty 5
A lyrical accounting of a man who claims to be a werewolf who meets a middle-aged professor of history in modern-day Kolkata. The werewolf gives the professor a set of pages to translate and transcribe: the story of a group of three werewolves (shape-shifters? ghouls? Viking berserkers? they don't quite match any human myth, but they themselves are altered by the stories told about them) who arrive in India just in time to witness the Taj Mahal being built. One creature finds himself obsessed with these fragile mortals beings and their constructions, and falls in love with a poor prostitute. Or tells himself that he's fallen in love. Or rapes a frightened and unwilling woman. This act changes the life of all three creatures, as well as the woman, who refuses to be just an object in a foreign man's story.

It's a book about language and loneliness and transformation and crossing boundaries, about queers and hybrids and misfits and stories and the question of who gets to narrate, about how what we experience and how others perceive us shape who we are. It's amazing. It's incredible. I want Das to write another full novel right now so that I can worship that too.

Highly recommended.]]> 3.74 2016 The Devourers
author: Indra Das
name: Patty
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/31
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: lgbt, poc-author, read-in-2024, south-asia, science-fiction-fantasy
review:
God, why did I wait so long to read this? It's so, so, SO good.

A lyrical accounting of a man who claims to be a werewolf who meets a middle-aged professor of history in modern-day Kolkata. The werewolf gives the professor a set of pages to translate and transcribe: the story of a group of three werewolves (shape-shifters? ghouls? Viking berserkers? they don't quite match any human myth, but they themselves are altered by the stories told about them) who arrive in India just in time to witness the Taj Mahal being built. One creature finds himself obsessed with these fragile mortals beings and their constructions, and falls in love with a poor prostitute. Or tells himself that he's fallen in love. Or rapes a frightened and unwilling woman. This act changes the life of all three creatures, as well as the woman, who refuses to be just an object in a foreign man's story.

It's a book about language and loneliness and transformation and crossing boundaries, about queers and hybrids and misfits and stories and the question of who gets to narrate, about how what we experience and how others perceive us shape who we are. It's amazing. It's incredible. I want Das to write another full novel right now so that I can worship that too.

Highly recommended.
]]> When Darkness Loves Us 868727
Sally Ann is a bright and bubbling farm girl, still caught in the thrill of a brand-new husband and a shining future ahead. When a careless exploration leaves her trapped underground, she learns to live again in the absence of everything she once knew. Even driven by love and light, Sally Ann finds the deepest darkness within herself in When Darkness Loves Us.

Beauty Is... - Old Martha Mannes has been a part of Morgan, Illinois since her birth. The whole town knows her as the dim-witted woman who was born without a nose, but Martha's mind wasn't always a blank slate. Unlocking the monster buried deep in her memories may bring back the sparkling child she once was... or it may send those around her crashing down into the nightmares of a little girl gone wrong.]]> 249 Elizabeth Engstrom 0688041752 Patty 4 horror, read-in-2024
"When Darkness Loves Us" is the story of a teenage farm girl, pregnant, who wanders into a maze of pitch-dark tunnels beneath her family's property. When she can't find her way back out, she must adapt to spending years and years without the sun in endless cold, wet caves.

"Beauty Is..." stars Martha: ugly, idiotic, middle-aged, and tolerated in her small country town only because of her healer mother, whose powers may have been supernatural. When Martha's life starts to improve, she too manifests startling changes –Ěýuntil the repercussions of a childhood trauma come back to call.

Both of these stories are extremely of their time, which is to say that they're problematic in about a million ways each. But if you can tolerate that, there's a dark, toxic (in the best sense), memorable compulsion here. The writing is simple but powerful, and the situations do not go where you expect. I'm sad that Engstrom didn't have a more prolific career because man, I'd love to see what else she could do.]]> 4.01 1985 When Darkness Loves Us
author: Elizabeth Engstrom
name: Patty
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1985
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/15
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: horror, read-in-2024
review:
Two horror novellas from the 80s.

"When Darkness Loves Us" is the story of a teenage farm girl, pregnant, who wanders into a maze of pitch-dark tunnels beneath her family's property. When she can't find her way back out, she must adapt to spending years and years without the sun in endless cold, wet caves.

"Beauty Is..." stars Martha: ugly, idiotic, middle-aged, and tolerated in her small country town only because of her healer mother, whose powers may have been supernatural. When Martha's life starts to improve, she too manifests startling changes –Ěýuntil the repercussions of a childhood trauma come back to call.

Both of these stories are extremely of their time, which is to say that they're problematic in about a million ways each. But if you can tolerate that, there's a dark, toxic (in the best sense), memorable compulsion here. The writing is simple but powerful, and the situations do not go where you expect. I'm sad that Engstrom didn't have a more prolific career because man, I'd love to see what else she could do.
]]> <![CDATA[The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft and Conflict in Early New England]]> 2015379 256 Emerson W. Baker 1403972079 Patty 4 3.52 2007 The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft and Conflict in Early New England
author: Emerson W. Baker
name: Patty
average rating: 3.52
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/23
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: historical-nonfiction, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:
Nonfiction about accusations of witchcraft and ghosts (specifically, mysterious specters throwing stones!) in a small town in New Hampshire, ten years before the Salem Witch Trials. Baker does an excellent job of delineating the various politics, class struggles, and interpersonal conflicts that divide any small town, while also placing this particular set of witchcraft accusations into the larger context of belief in the supernatural in both New England and old England, and how one set of accusations influenced another through time. Very readable, but honestly probably not all that interesting unless you're already engaged in the topic.
]]> When No One Is Watching 49398072 Rear Window meets Get Out in this gripping thriller from a critically acclaimed and New York Times Notable author, in which the gentrification of a Brooklyn neighborhood takes on a sinister new meaning...

Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she's known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community's past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block--her neighbor Theo.

But Sydney and Theo's deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear. Their neighbors may not have moved to the suburbs after all, and the push to revitalize the community may be more deadly than advertised.

When does coincidence become conspiracy? Where do people go when gentrification pushes them out? Can Sydney and Theo trust each other--or themselves--long enough to find out before they too disappear?

Featured in Parade, Essence, Bustle, Popsugar, Elle, Shondaland, Marie Claire, Buzzfeed, Entertainment Weekly, Good Housekeeping, Brit + Co, Real Simple, Lit Hub, Crime Reads, Blavity, Ms. Magazine, Hello Giggles, The New York Times, Town & Country, Newsweek, New York Post, Refinery29, Woman's World, Washington Post, the Skimm, Book Riot, Bookish, Huffington Post, and more!
]]> 352 Alyssa Cole 0062982656 Patty 3
I live only a few blocks from the area Cole is writing about, and I love getting to read about places I recognize. Cole does a wonderful job with it, really capturing the look and feel of Bed-Stuy. The first half of the book, as Sydney confronts the history of racism in NYC while avoiding her own family problems, was very good. Unfortunately the plot gets ridiculous by the end, and the romance between Sydney and Theo didn't work for me.

Overall, not bad, but it had the potential to be so much better. ]]> 3.45 2020 When No One Is Watching
author: Alyssa Cole
name: Patty
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/26
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: horror, poc-author, read-in-2024, mystery
review:
Sydney is a Black Brooklyn-born woman, fighting against the gentrification of her Bed-Stuy block. Theo is her new white neighbor, perhaps one of those very gentrifiers, but dealing with a crumbling relationship, no job prospects, and no friends. They team up to research a walking tour about the Black history of their neighborhood, but begin to uncover clues to something very bad, very big, and very recent.

I live only a few blocks from the area Cole is writing about, and I love getting to read about places I recognize. Cole does a wonderful job with it, really capturing the look and feel of Bed-Stuy. The first half of the book, as Sydney confronts the history of racism in NYC while avoiding her own family problems, was very good. Unfortunately the plot gets ridiculous by the end, and the romance between Sydney and Theo didn't work for me.

Overall, not bad, but it had the potential to be so much better.
]]> From Below 58830202 Hundreds of feet beneath the ocean's surface, a graveyard waits...

Years ago, the SS Arcadia vanished without a trace during a routine voyage. Though a strange, garbled emergency message was broadcast, neither the ship nor any of its crew could be found. Sixty years later, its wreck has finally been discovered more than three hundred miles from its intended course...a silent graveyard deep beneath the ocean's surface, eagerly waiting for the first sign of life.

Cove and her dive team have been granted permission to explore the Arcadia's rusting hull. Their purpose is straightforward: examine the wreck, film everything, and, if possible, uncover how and why the supposedly unsinkable ship vanished.

But the Arcadia has not yet had its fill of death, and something dark and hungry watches from below. With limited oxygen and the ship slowly closing in around them, Cove and her team will have to fight their way free of the unspeakable horror now desperate to claim them.

Because once they're trapped beneath the ocean's waves, there's no going back.]]> 469 Darcy Coates 1728220238 Patty 4 horror, read-in-2024
In 2022, its wreck has finally been found, in an unusually deep and cold part of the North Sea. A small team sets out to be the first to capture video footage of the inside of the ship and perhaps solve the riddle of what happened � but they've only got a short time to work before other people beat them to the site, and if they back out of their contract, they'll all end up in overwhelming debt. Too bad for them that it seems the wreck might be quite literally haunted.

Coates is not a particularly skilled writer, either on a sentence-to-sentence level or in terms of characterization, plot, and pacing. That said, the premise of being so deep underwater and reliant on tanks of limited oxygen, where any fast movement could stir up enough silt to trap you in the mazy narrow hallways of a ship, which is also full of floating rotting corpses animated by an unknowable horror –Ěýit's so fantastic that it doesn't matter how poorly written it is. Will any of the twists surprise you? No. Will you be unable to put this down anyway? Yes. It's not any good and I'm recommending it to everyone.]]> 3.94 2022 From Below
author: Darcy Coates
name: Patty
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/19
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: horror, read-in-2024
review:
In 1928, a Titanic-esque ocean liner sank after sending out one last mysterious radio message.

In 2022, its wreck has finally been found, in an unusually deep and cold part of the North Sea. A small team sets out to be the first to capture video footage of the inside of the ship and perhaps solve the riddle of what happened � but they've only got a short time to work before other people beat them to the site, and if they back out of their contract, they'll all end up in overwhelming debt. Too bad for them that it seems the wreck might be quite literally haunted.

Coates is not a particularly skilled writer, either on a sentence-to-sentence level or in terms of characterization, plot, and pacing. That said, the premise of being so deep underwater and reliant on tanks of limited oxygen, where any fast movement could stir up enough silt to trap you in the mazy narrow hallways of a ship, which is also full of floating rotting corpses animated by an unknowable horror –Ěýit's so fantastic that it doesn't matter how poorly written it is. Will any of the twists surprise you? No. Will you be unable to put this down anyway? Yes. It's not any good and I'm recommending it to everyone.
]]> The Final Girl Support Group 55829194 In horror movies, the final girls are the ones left standingĚýwhen the credits roll. They made it through the worst night of their lives…but what happens after?

Like his bestselling novel The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, Grady Hendrix’s latest is a fast-paced, frightening, and wickedly humorous thriller. FromĚýchainĚýsaws to summer camp slayers, The Final Girl Support Group pays tribute to and slyly subverts our most popular horror films—movies like The TexasĚýChainsaw Massacre, AĚýNightmare on Elm Street, and Scream.

Lynnette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre. For more than a decade, she’s been meeting with five other final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, working to put their lives back together. Then one woman misses a meeting, and their worst fears are realized—someone knows about the group and is determined to rip their lives apart again, piece by piece.

But the thing about final girls is that no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up.]]> 352 Grady Hendrix 059320123X Patty 5 horror, read-in-2024
I absolutely LOVED this book. I'm always surprised and in awe of Hendrix's ability to write believable, sympathetic, messy female characters, and this was no exception. The mystery of who was the killer kept me guessing right until the end, the tension was sky-high, and the theme of exploiting tragedy for entertainment was well-done. It's entertaining, it's thoughtful, it's one of my favorite books of the year.]]> 3.49 2021 The Final Girl Support Group
author: Grady Hendrix
name: Patty
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/12
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: horror, read-in-2024
review:
Six women who are clear expies for the final girls of various slasher franchises (we've got Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Scream, and, much less popular, Silent Night Deadly Night) meet regularly at a trauma therapy group; they're the only ones who can understand what they've been through. It's all about healing and moving forward, until someone begins to come after them one by one. Who could know their secrets? Can they trust one another? Will they survive this reboot?

I absolutely LOVED this book. I'm always surprised and in awe of Hendrix's ability to write believable, sympathetic, messy female characters, and this was no exception. The mystery of who was the killer kept me guessing right until the end, the tension was sky-high, and the theme of exploiting tragedy for entertainment was well-done. It's entertaining, it's thoughtful, it's one of my favorite books of the year.
]]> The Burning Girls 53387949 An unconventional vicar moves to a remote corner of the English countryside, only to discover a community haunted by death and disappearances both past and present--and intent on keeping its dark secrets--in this explosive, unsettling thriller from acclaimed author C. J. Tudor.

Welcome to Chapel Croft. Five hundred years ago, eight protestant martyrs were burned at the stake here. Thirty years ago, two teenage girls disappeared without a trace. And two months ago, the vicar of the local parish killed himself.

Reverend Jack Brooks, a single parent with a fourteen-year-old daughter and a heavy conscience, arrives in the village hoping to make a fresh start and find some peace. Instead, Jack finds a town mired in secrecy and a strange welcome package: an old exorcism kit and a note quoting scripture. "But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed and hidden that will not be known."

The more Jack and her daughter Flo get acquainted with the town and its strange denizens, the deeper they are drawn into their rifts, mysteries, and suspicions. And when Flo is troubled by strange sightings in the old chapel, it becomes apparent that there are ghosts here that refuse to be laid to rest.

But uncovering the truth can be deadly in a village where everyone has something to protect, everyone has links with the village's bloody past, and no one trusts an outsider.]]> 333 C.J. Tudor 198482502X Patty 2 horror, read-in-2024
I did race through this fairly quickly, but the ultimate resolution of the mystery is so dumb and doesn't really work with most of the book beforehand. Also I mainly wanted to read this for the ghosts of some girls who were burned for being Protestants, and then that ended up being an extremely minor C-plot. Don't name your book after the least important detail! ]]> 3.97 2021 The Burning Girls
author: C.J. Tudor
name: Patty
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/07
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves: horror, read-in-2024
review:
Reverend Jack and her teenage daughter move from busy London to a small town in the countryside, and find several new problems:Ěýthe new chapel is possibly haunted, two teenage girls who went missing in the 90s are a still pressing yet unsolved mystery, and Jack's daughter is making friends with the local emo boy who might have more going on than being bullied.

I did race through this fairly quickly, but the ultimate resolution of the mystery is so dumb and doesn't really work with most of the book beforehand. Also I mainly wanted to read this for the ghosts of some girls who were burned for being Protestants, and then that ended up being an extremely minor C-plot. Don't name your book after the least important detail!
]]> <![CDATA[The Central Middle Ages (Short Oxford History of Europe)]]> 2274788
In this book seven experts in the field examine how Europe was transformed in the Central Middle Ages. Thematic chapters analyse the political, social, economic, religious and intellectual history of Latin Christendom, and trace its expansion to the north, south and east. As well as many familiar topics the authors discuss less well known aspects of the period such as the popular experience of religion or the new kingdoms of east-central Europe. The book includes a chronology of developments, a glossary, maps, illustrations and guidance for further reading.]]> 304 Daniel Power 0199253129 Patty 4 3.88 2005 The Central Middle Ages (Short Oxford History of Europe)
author: Daniel Power
name: Patty
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/19
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: historical-nonfiction, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:
A good overview of an admittedly huge span of time and space. Seven chapters written by seven different experts cover a wide variety of topics (religion, economy, kingship, the expansion of Christendom into Eastern Europe, etc). There's not enough time to get deep into anything, of course, but the bibliography points to an incredibly wide range of sources.
]]> Rough Trade 127282247
Then two local men end up dead, with all signs pointing to the opium trade, and a botched effort to disappear the bodies draws lawmen to town. Alma scrambles to keep them away from her operation but is distracted by the surprise appearance of Bess Spencer—an ex-Pinkerton's agent and Alma’s first love—after years of silence. A handsome young stranger comes to town, too, and falls into an affair with one of Alma's crewmen. When he starts asking questions about opium, Alma begins to suspect she’s welcomed a spy into her inner circle, and is forced to consider how far she’ll go to protect her trade.

Katrina Carrasco plunges readers into the vivid, rough-and-tumble world of the late-1800s Pacific Northwest in this genre- and gender-blurring novel. Rough Trade follows Carrasco’s critically acclaimed debut The Best Bad Things and reimagines queer communities, the turbulent early days of modern media and medicine, and the pleasures—and price—of satisfying desire.]]> 384 Katrina Carrasco 0374272689 Patty 5 fantastic sequel to The Best Bad Things! A queer Western told with all the lyricism of a literary novel and the clear-eyed devotion to facts of an economic textbook.

Alma Rosales (who presents herself as Jack Campbell) runs an opium-smuggling gang in Tacoma in 1888. Everything seems to be going well –Ěýuntil everything goes wrong all at once. Alma's ex-friend/ex-crush, Bess Spencer, shows up in town; Alma's boss demands that she find a new way to get the executives of the railroad company on their side; someone is murdering opium-addicted workingmen; a journalist is tracking the smuggling operation from the factories in Canada to the docks of Tacoma; and a Pinkerton detective arrives in town looking for a train robber but possibly will be in the right place to find evidence of Alma's gang.

I love this series. It's such a vivid recreation of history in all its muddy, cold, wet, bloody reality, balanced by Alma's desire for affection and trust, but need to keep herself safe.

Highly recommended. ]]> 3.68 2024 Rough Trade
author: Katrina Carrasco
name: Patty
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/06
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: historical-fiction, lgbt, literary-fiction, read-in-2024
review:
Absolutely fantastic sequel to The Best Bad Things! A queer Western told with all the lyricism of a literary novel and the clear-eyed devotion to facts of an economic textbook.

Alma Rosales (who presents herself as Jack Campbell) runs an opium-smuggling gang in Tacoma in 1888. Everything seems to be going well –Ěýuntil everything goes wrong all at once. Alma's ex-friend/ex-crush, Bess Spencer, shows up in town; Alma's boss demands that she find a new way to get the executives of the railroad company on their side; someone is murdering opium-addicted workingmen; a journalist is tracking the smuggling operation from the factories in Canada to the docks of Tacoma; and a Pinkerton detective arrives in town looking for a train robber but possibly will be in the right place to find evidence of Alma's gang.

I love this series. It's such a vivid recreation of history in all its muddy, cold, wet, bloody reality, balanced by Alma's desire for affection and trust, but need to keep herself safe.

Highly recommended.
]]> <![CDATA[Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon]]> 62594253

Through the vibrant letters and diaries of the two women, science journalist Melissa L. Sevigny traces their forty-three-day journey, during which they ran rapids, chased a runaway boat, and turned their harshest critic into an ally. Their story is a spellbinding adventure of two women who risked their lives to make an unprecedented botanical survey of a little-known corner of the American West at a time when human influences had begun to change it forever.]]> 304 Melissa L. Sevigny 0393868230 Patty 4
A really readable, entertaining account of this history. My one complaint is that I would have liked a little more focus on the actual botany instead of just the interpersonal drama and mishaps, but that's a minor problem. I found this hard to put down. ]]> 4.12 2023 Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon
author: Melissa L. Sevigny
name: Patty
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2024/12/31
shelves: historical-nonfiction, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:
Nonfiction about the first two (white) women to boat the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon � before the Glen Canyon dam tamed the rapids, before the invention of rubber rafts or fiberglass dories, before the National Park service permitted boating the river by anyone. Though they were there to do real science, recording the diversity of plant species within the Canyon (which had never been done before, and they discovered at least two new species in the process), the national press became obsessed with the optics of the 'fairer sex defying death on the river', making them famous � but perhaps the word should be infamous, with most newspapers misquoting them, focusing on what they were wearing, or speculating on how the river trip would affect their marriage prospects.

A really readable, entertaining account of this history. My one complaint is that I would have liked a little more focus on the actual botany instead of just the interpersonal drama and mishaps, but that's a minor problem. I found this hard to put down.
]]> Far Out 55711354
Speculative fiction imagines drastically diverse ways of being and worlds that are other than the one with which we are familiar. Queerness is a natural fit for such fiction, so one would expect it to be customarily included. That has not always been the case, but LGBTQ+ representation in science fiction and fantasy—in both short and long form—is now relatively common. Even so, most of the queer science fiction and fantasy anthologies published in the last thirty-five years have been narrowly specifically gay male or lesbian (or, more recently, transgender) themes, or all science fiction or all fantasy, or adhering to a specific theme or subgenre.
Ěý
Far Recent Queer Science Fiction and Fantasy , on the other hand, features both science fiction and fantasy short fiction from the last decade and includes characters, perspectives, and stories that span the rainbow. With stories from incredible authors ranging from Seanan McGuire to Charlie Jane Anders to Sam J. Miller, it’s an essential read for anyone interested in queer science fiction and fantasy.

Contents

Over the Rainbow and into the Far Out by Paula Guran

Destroyed by the Waters by Rachel Swirsky

The Sea Troll’s Daughter by Caitlín R. Kiernan

And If the Body Were Not the Soul by A. C. Wise

Imago by Tristan Alice Nieto

Paranormal Romance by Christopher Barzak

Three Points Masculine by An Owomoyela

Das Steingeschöpf by G. V. Anderson

The Deepwater Bride by Tamsyn Muir

The Shape of My Name by Nino Cipri

Otherwise by Nisi Shawl

The Night Train by Lavie Tidhar

Ours Is the Prettiest by Nalo Hopkinson

Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue by Charlie Jane Anders

Driving Jenny Home by Seanan McGuire

I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno by Vylar Kaftan

In the Eyes of Jack Saul by Richard Bowes

Secondhand Bodies by Neon Yang

Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar

NĂ© Ĺ‚e! by Darcie Little Badger

The Duke of Riverside by Ellen Kushner

Cat Pictures Please by Naomi Kritzer

The Lily and the Horn by Catherynne M. Valente

Calved by Sam J. Miller

The River’s Children by Shweta Narayan]]> 432 Paula Guran 1949102556 Patty 5
My favorites:
"The Deepwater Bride" by Tamsyn Muir. Cthulhu with teenage lesbians. Hilarious and gory and told through an absolutely compelling voice. I want this to be a whole novel, please.

“Cat Pictures Please� by Naomi Kritzer. An AI achieves sentience and decides to make things better for humans. It doesn't work out. Cute and funny.

"Three Points Masculine" by An Owomoyela. Gender boundaries in a military dystopia. Sad and thoughtful, though it could have used a bit more worldbuilding. This reminded me, in a very good way, of Isabel Fall's "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter".

"In the Eyes of Jack Saul"Ěýby Richard Bowes. A retelling of The Portrait of Dorian Gray from the POV of a molly prostitute. A different perspective on a classic, with another incredibly strong voice.]]> 4.15 2016 Far Out
author: Paula Guran
name: Patty
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/06
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves: historical-fiction, lgbt, poc-author, read-in-2024, romance, science-fiction-fantasy
review:
A collection of fantasy and sci-fi short storiesĚýthat focus on LGBT themes and characters. All anthologies are a mix of good and bad, but this one was weighted much higher to the good side than usual. A wonderful range of queer content as well (a surprisingly high number of trans stories!), and none where the queer character was just a minor note.

My favorites:
"The Deepwater Bride" by Tamsyn Muir. Cthulhu with teenage lesbians. Hilarious and gory and told through an absolutely compelling voice. I want this to be a whole novel, please.

“Cat Pictures Please� by Naomi Kritzer. An AI achieves sentience and decides to make things better for humans. It doesn't work out. Cute and funny.

"Three Points Masculine" by An Owomoyela. Gender boundaries in a military dystopia. Sad and thoughtful, though it could have used a bit more worldbuilding. This reminded me, in a very good way, of Isabel Fall's "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter".

"In the Eyes of Jack Saul"Ěýby Richard Bowes. A retelling of The Portrait of Dorian Gray from the POV of a molly prostitute. A different perspective on a classic, with another incredibly strong voice.
]]> <![CDATA[Love and Death in the American Novel]]> 320687 520 Leslie A. Fiedler 1564781631 Patty 4
Fiedler's basic thesis is still provocative: the greatest American novels (he focuses particularly on The Last of the Mohicans, Moby Dick, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) all feature a white man turning away from civilization and heterosexual relationships, choosing instead an intense bond with a man of color. Why is this? What does it mean?

Fiedler sets out to explore the causes behind this observation by looking at the rise and meaning of the novel itself, which means he spends at least half his book, if not more, focusing on early European novels. He insists that the very first novel was Clarissa (kind of an odd choice, in my opinion, since Robinson Crusoe fits his model so much better, but whatever; Crusoe gets one sentence out of this whole book while Clarissa gets chapter upon chapter), and that its dynamic of virginal-heroine-saves-rake set the tone for the next three centuries of novels. Add in a dash of Gothic, a sprinkle of Romanticism and eventually, according to Fiedler, you've got the Great American Novel. All of this is surprisingly entertaining; the five hundred pages of this doorstopper of literary criticism raced by, and I found myself more engaged than I'd been with several recent novels.

It's not all good; Love and Death in the American Novel is almost seventy years old at this point and it shows. Fiedler has an extremely normative view of culture, and he clearly assumes that the primary writers and readers of novels are all white men. On the other hand, he does sees gender and race as important categories of investigation, which is pretty remarkable for an idea that started as an article published in 19-fucking-48. He also has weird oversights here and there. For example, he spends a fair amount of time talking about Edgar Allan Poe, but almost all of it is focused on The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, a failure when it was published and nearly forgotten today. Many pieces of Poe's writing that I would assume are way more influential –�The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Masque of the Red Death, among others � don't rate a single mention. Fiedler also falls down when analyzing writing closer to his own period. For all of his insight into 1800s authors, when it comes to the mid-1900s, he spends a bizarre amount of time on Marjorie Morningstar, a book I've never even heard of! He also dismisses The Great Gatsby, Shirley Jackson, and Flannery O'Connor as second-rate and not worth investigating.

Recommended if you're willing to overlook unsurprising but annoying tendencies of a book written in the 1950s.]]> 4.04 1960 Love and Death in the American Novel
author: Leslie A. Fiedler
name: Patty
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1960
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/12
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves: historical-nonfiction, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:
A work of literary criticism that is actually pretty fun!

Fiedler's basic thesis is still provocative: the greatest American novels (he focuses particularly on The Last of the Mohicans, Moby Dick, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) all feature a white man turning away from civilization and heterosexual relationships, choosing instead an intense bond with a man of color. Why is this? What does it mean?

Fiedler sets out to explore the causes behind this observation by looking at the rise and meaning of the novel itself, which means he spends at least half his book, if not more, focusing on early European novels. He insists that the very first novel was Clarissa (kind of an odd choice, in my opinion, since Robinson Crusoe fits his model so much better, but whatever; Crusoe gets one sentence out of this whole book while Clarissa gets chapter upon chapter), and that its dynamic of virginal-heroine-saves-rake set the tone for the next three centuries of novels. Add in a dash of Gothic, a sprinkle of Romanticism and eventually, according to Fiedler, you've got the Great American Novel. All of this is surprisingly entertaining; the five hundred pages of this doorstopper of literary criticism raced by, and I found myself more engaged than I'd been with several recent novels.

It's not all good; Love and Death in the American Novel is almost seventy years old at this point and it shows. Fiedler has an extremely normative view of culture, and he clearly assumes that the primary writers and readers of novels are all white men. On the other hand, he does sees gender and race as important categories of investigation, which is pretty remarkable for an idea that started as an article published in 19-fucking-48. He also has weird oversights here and there. For example, he spends a fair amount of time talking about Edgar Allan Poe, but almost all of it is focused on The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, a failure when it was published and nearly forgotten today. Many pieces of Poe's writing that I would assume are way more influential –�The Raven, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Cask of Amontillado, The Masque of the Red Death, among others � don't rate a single mention. Fiedler also falls down when analyzing writing closer to his own period. For all of his insight into 1800s authors, when it comes to the mid-1900s, he spends a bizarre amount of time on Marjorie Morningstar, a book I've never even heard of! He also dismisses The Great Gatsby, Shirley Jackson, and Flannery O'Connor as second-rate and not worth investigating.

Recommended if you're willing to overlook unsurprising but annoying tendencies of a book written in the 1950s.
]]> The Whale: A Love Story 27209385 A rich and captivating novel set amid the witty, high-spirited literary society of 1850s New England, offering a new window on Herman Melville's emotionally charged relationship with Nathaniel Hawthorne and how it transformed his masterpiece, Moby-Dick

In the summer of 1850, Herman Melville finds himself hounded by creditors and afraid his writing career might be coming to an end--his last three novels have been commercial failures and the critics have turned against him. In despair, Melville takes his family for a vacation to his cousin's farm in the Berkshires, where he meets Nathaniel Hawthorne at a picnic--and his life turns upside down.

The Whale chronicles the fervent love affair that grows out of that serendipitous afternoon. Already in debt, Melville recklessly borrows money to purchase a local farm in order to remain near Hawthorne, his newfound muse. The two develop a deep connection marked by tensions and estrangements, and feelings both shared and suppressed.

Melville dedicated Moby-Dick to Hawthorne, and Mark Beauregard's novel fills in the story behind that dedication with historical accuracy and exquisite emotional precision, reflecting his nuanced reading of the real letters and journals of Melville, Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and others. An exuberant tale of longing and passion, The Whale captures not only a transformative relationship--long the subject of speculation--between two of our most enduring authors, but also their exhilarating moment in history, when a community of high-spirited and ambitious writers was creating truly American literature for the first time.]]> 288 Mark Beauregard 0399562338 Patty 1 Moby Dick and Hawthorne was writing The House of the Seven Gables. Were they... in love????

I am incredibly here for speculating that the many queer themes in Melville's writings extended into his real life, but this novel is not the place to look for an interesting exploration of that idea. First of all, if you've read "Hawthorne and His Mosses" (Melville's INCREDIBLY HORNY review of Hawthorne's writing) and/or any of Melville's letters to Hawthorne, you're not going to find anything new in The Whale. Beauregard is so focused on being scrupulously accurate to the historical record that he refuses to build on what we already know to find something new. That's the fun of writing this story as fiction, rather than the nonfiction that Beauregard seems more suited to!

Secondly, Beauregard's writing is just... bad. I'm sorry to say it, but it's flat, tedious, and mundanely straightforward. He's describing the inner thoughts of one of the most creative, lyrical, radical, experimental writers, and all he can come up with is prose that sounds like the "About Us" section of a webpage! I get that trying to do a pastiche of Melville might have been intimidating, but come on, give us something. Write it in a wild post-modern style, go for overblown Romanticism, try out an omniscient narrator –Ěýdo absolutely anything other than the utmost crime of being boring.

Not recommended.]]> 3.54 2016 The Whale: A Love Story
author: Mark Beauregard
name: Patty
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2016
rating: 1
read at: 2024/12/16
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves: historical-fiction, lgbt, literary-fiction, read-in-2024
review:
A novel about the (more than friendly?) relationship between Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne, who lived near one another in rural Massachusetts while Melville was working on Moby Dick and Hawthorne was writing The House of the Seven Gables. Were they... in love????

I am incredibly here for speculating that the many queer themes in Melville's writings extended into his real life, but this novel is not the place to look for an interesting exploration of that idea. First of all, if you've read "Hawthorne and His Mosses" (Melville's INCREDIBLY HORNY review of Hawthorne's writing) and/or any of Melville's letters to Hawthorne, you're not going to find anything new in The Whale. Beauregard is so focused on being scrupulously accurate to the historical record that he refuses to build on what we already know to find something new. That's the fun of writing this story as fiction, rather than the nonfiction that Beauregard seems more suited to!

Secondly, Beauregard's writing is just... bad. I'm sorry to say it, but it's flat, tedious, and mundanely straightforward. He's describing the inner thoughts of one of the most creative, lyrical, radical, experimental writers, and all he can come up with is prose that sounds like the "About Us" section of a webpage! I get that trying to do a pastiche of Melville might have been intimidating, but come on, give us something. Write it in a wild post-modern style, go for overblown Romanticism, try out an omniscient narrator –Ěýdo absolutely anything other than the utmost crime of being boring.

Not recommended.
]]> Dayswork 123410752 In wry, epigrammatic prose, Dayswork tells the story of a woman who spends the endless days of the pandemic sorting fact from fiction in the life and work of Herman Melville.

Obsessed by what his devotion to his art reveals about cost, worth, and debt, she delves into Melville’s impulsive purchase of a Massachusetts farmhouse, his fevered revision of Moby-Dick there, his intense friendship with neighbor Nathaniel Hawthorne, and his troubled and troubling marriage to Elizabeth Shaw.

As the narrator’s fascination grows and her research deepens, she examines Melville’s effect on the imagination and lives of generations of biographers and writers, including Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell. Ultimately, her quarantine project is a midlife reckoning with her own marriage and ambition. Absorbing, charming, and intimate, Dayswork considers the blurry lines between literature and life, and the ways we locate ourselves in the lives of others.]]> 240 Chris Bachelder 1324065400 Patty 5
Is it a novel, a memoir, a poem? It's written in short lines separated by wide spans of white spaces, somewhat about the authors' real lives but also taking on the forms and themes of fiction. Those lines range over all sorts of tenuously connected topics � the writer's marriage, a previous break she had with her husband, the deepest days of covid quarantine, her obsession with Herman Melville, Melville's obsession with Nathaniel Hawthorne, Melville's own troubled marriage, various biographers' obsession with Melville, Elizabeth Hardwick's own troubled marriage and biography of Melville, whales and Bryon's pet bear and post-it notes. It's about obsession and relationships, about the difficulty of communicating with another person, about the limits of knowledge. The first pages felt distant and boring, and then somehow I was absolutely swept up and couldn't put it down.

A remarkably strange book, but one I fond myself in love with.]]> 3.74 2023 Dayswork
author: Chris Bachelder
name: Patty
average rating: 3.74
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves: historical-nonfiction, literary-fiction, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:
God, what a hard to describe book!

Is it a novel, a memoir, a poem? It's written in short lines separated by wide spans of white spaces, somewhat about the authors' real lives but also taking on the forms and themes of fiction. Those lines range over all sorts of tenuously connected topics � the writer's marriage, a previous break she had with her husband, the deepest days of covid quarantine, her obsession with Herman Melville, Melville's obsession with Nathaniel Hawthorne, Melville's own troubled marriage, various biographers' obsession with Melville, Elizabeth Hardwick's own troubled marriage and biography of Melville, whales and Bryon's pet bear and post-it notes. It's about obsession and relationships, about the difficulty of communicating with another person, about the limits of knowledge. The first pages felt distant and boring, and then somehow I was absolutely swept up and couldn't put it down.

A remarkably strange book, but one I fond myself in love with.
]]> <![CDATA[A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon]]> 199798198
The Grand Canyon is an American treasure, visited by more than 6 million people a year, many of whom are rendered speechless by its vast beauty, mystery, and complexity. Now, in A Walk in the Park , author Kevin Fedarko chronicles his year-long effort to find a 750-mile path along the length of the Grand Canyon, through a vertical wilderness suspended between the caprock along the rims of the abyss and the Colorado River, which flows along its bottom.

Consisting of countless cliffs and steep drops, plus immense stretches with almost no access to water, and the fact that not a single trail links its eastern doorway to its western terminus, this jewel of national parks is so challenging that when Fedarko departed fewer people had completed the journey in one single hike than had walked on the moon. The intensity of the effort required him to break his trip into several legs, each of which held staggering dangers and unexpected discoveries.

Accompanying Fedarko through this sublime yet perilous terrain is the award-winning photographer Peter McBride, who captures the stunning landscape in breathtaking photos. Together, they encounter long-lost Native American ruins, the remains of Old West prospectors� camps, present day tribal activists, and signs that commercial tourism is impinging on the park’s remote wildness.

An epic adventure, action-packed survival tale, and a deep spiritual journey, A Walk in the Park gives us an unprecedented glimpse of the crown jewel of America’s National an iconic landscape framed by ancient rock whose contours are recognized by all, but whose secrets and treasures are known to almost no one, and whose topography encompasses some of the harshest, least explored, most awe-inspiring terrain in the world.]]> 512 Kevin Fedarko 1501183052 Patty 4
Fedarko's writing combines their own (pretty inept!) experience with some extremely evocative nature writing, along with detours into the geology and human history of the canyon, stories of other hikers who have lost their lives, and interviews with the people who assist them along the way. I'd seen some reviews that described this as a funny book, but it's very much not that � there's one or two scenes that bring a laugh, but overall it's a fairly serious story of love for the canyon's landscape and life, and a warning of its potential loss.

On the negative side, some parts dragged; it's just not a particularly gripping book. But on the positive side, it is absolutely packed with information on a huge variety of topics, and full of beautiful, evocative writing. I also found it more than usually respectful of the native nations who live in and around the Canyon.]]> 4.22 2024 A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
author: Kevin Fedarko
name: Patty
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/25
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves: nonfiction, read-in-2024, travel
review:
A nonfiction story of two guys (a National Geographic writer and photographer) who set out to hike the Grand Canyon all the way from one end to the other � a journey of 750 miles through some of the toughest terrain on Earth. Fewer people have made this hike than have been on the moon.

Fedarko's writing combines their own (pretty inept!) experience with some extremely evocative nature writing, along with detours into the geology and human history of the canyon, stories of other hikers who have lost their lives, and interviews with the people who assist them along the way. I'd seen some reviews that described this as a funny book, but it's very much not that � there's one or two scenes that bring a laugh, but overall it's a fairly serious story of love for the canyon's landscape and life, and a warning of its potential loss.

On the negative side, some parts dragged; it's just not a particularly gripping book. But on the positive side, it is absolutely packed with information on a huge variety of topics, and full of beautiful, evocative writing. I also found it more than usually respectful of the native nations who live in and around the Canyon.
]]> All the World Beside 181350347 An electrifying, deeply moving novel about the love story between two men in Puritan New England

Cana, a utopian vision of 18th-century Puritan New England. To the outside world, Reverend Nathaniel Whitfield and his family stand as godly pillars of their small-town community, drawing Christians from across the New World into their fold. One such Christian, physician Arthur Lyman, discovers in the minister’s words a love so captivating it transcends language.

As the bond between these two men grows increasingly passionate, their families must contend with a tangled web of secrets, lies, and judgments that threaten to destroy them in this world and the next. And when the religious ecstasies of the Great Awakening begin to take hold, igniting a new era of zealotry, Nathaniel and Arthur search for a path out of an impossible situation, imagining a future for themselves that has no name. Their wives and children must do the same, looking beyond the known world for a new kind of wilderness, both physical and spiritual.

Set during the turbulent historical upheavals that shaped America’s destiny, and following in the tradition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter , All the World Beside reveals the very human lives beneath the surface of dogmatic belief.]]> 352 Garrard Conley 0525537333 Patty 0 to-read 3.69 2024 All the World Beside
author: Garrard Conley
name: Patty
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Cabaret of Plants: Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination]]> 25622794 The Cabaret of Plants is a masterful, globe-trotting exploration of the relationship between humans and the kingdom of plants by the renowned naturalist Richard Mabey.

A rich, sweeping, and wonderfully readable work of botanical history, The Cabaret of Plants explores dozens of plant species that for millennia have challenged our imaginations, awoken our wonder, and upturned our ideas about history, science, beauty, and belief. Going back to the beginnings of human history, Mabey shows how flowers, trees, and plants have been central to human experience not just as sources of food and medicine but as objects of worship, actors in creation myths, and symbols of war and peace, life and death.

Writing in a celebrated style that the Economist calls “delightful and casually learned,� Mabey takes readers from the Himalayas to Madagascar to the Amazon to our own backyards. He ranges through the work of writers, artists, and scientists such as da Vinci, Keats, Darwin, and van Gogh and across nearly 40,000 years of human history: Ice Age images of plant life in ancient cave art and the earliest representations of the Garden of Eden; Newton’s apple and gravity, Priestley’s sprig of mint and photosynthesis, and Wordsworth’s daffodils; the history of cultivated plants such as maize, ginseng, and cotton; and the ways the sturdy oak became the symbol of British nationhood and the giant sequoia came to epitomize the spirit of America.

Complemented by dozens of full-color illustrations, The Cabaret of Plants is the magnum opus of a great naturalist and an extraordinary exploration of the deeply interwined history of humans and the natural world.]]> 384 Richard Mabey 0393239977 Patty 0 to-read 3.70 2016 The Cabaret of Plants: Forty Thousand Years of Plant Life and the Human Imagination
author: Richard Mabey
name: Patty
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Catfishing on CatNet (CatNet, #1)]]> 41556068
When a threat from Steph’s past catches up to her and ChesireCat’s existence is discovered by outsiders, it’s up to Steph and her friends, both online and IRL, to save her.]]> 299 Naomi Kritzer 1250165075 Patty 0 to-read 4.04 2019 Catfishing on CatNet (CatNet, #1)
author: Naomi Kritzer
name: Patty
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story]]> 204316857 The Nobelist's latest masterwork, set in a sanitarium on the eve of World War I, probes the horrors that lie beneath our most hallowed ideas.

In September 1913, MieczysĹ‚aw, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz's Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort inĚýGörbersdorf, what is now western Poland. Every day, its residents gather in the dining room to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur, to obsess over money and status, and to discuss the great issues of the day: Will there be war? Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women inherently inferior?

Meanwhile, disturbing things are beginning to happen in the guesthouse and its surroundings. As stories of shocking events in the surrounding highlands reach the men, a sense of dread builds. Someone—or something—seems to be watching them and attempting to infiltrate their world. Little does Mieczysław realize, as he attempts to unravel both the truths within himself and the mystery of the sinister forces beyond, that they have already chosen their next target.

A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, blending horror story, comedy, folklore, and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.]]> 320 Olga Tokarczuk 0593712943 Patty 0 to-read 3.66 2022 The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: Patty
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Black River 63352827
At the station house, the jurisdiction of which extends to Teetarpur and the neighbouring villages, Sub-inspector Ombir Singh, who has known Chand’s daughter Munia since she was born, wrestles with his conscience and the vagaries of his personal life as the increasingly murky case unfolds under the watchful eyes of the â€Delhi boyâ€�, SSP Pilania.

Meanwhile, in the rough bylanes of Bright Dairy Colony, Chand’s old companions Rabia and Badshah Miyan fight for their right to home and country as the politics of religion threaten to overwhelm their lives.

Framed as a police procedural, Black River is fast-paced and relentless, yet tender and reflective, in its exploration of friendship, love and grief.

â€A riveting murder mystery. A psychological thriller. A magnificent work of literary fiction. Roy brings her formidable experience as a journalist to this story of crime in modern India. Black River addresses a society unravelling in the midst of change, a brutal class divide, the terror of religious strife, relentless violence against women—but it is also suffused with tenderness for the ordinary, heroic decency of those who persist in abiding by different rules. Reading this novel is like holding a prayer in one’s hands.â€�
� Kiran Desai]]> 368 Nilanjana Roy 9395767111 Patty 0 to-read 3.86 Black River
author: Nilanjana Roy
name: Patty
average rating: 3.86
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Patty 5 Emma best, but when I reread it recently, I was too bothered by the classism to enjoy it as much as I once had. (Not that any of Austen's novels are free of classism, of course, but in Mansfield Park it's a quiet background noise compared to the CENTRAL FOCUS OF THE PLOT as it is in Emma.) Fanny is timid, unloved, and suffers from some undefined type of chronic illness (I'm pointlessly fascinated by trying to figure out what the hell, specifically, it is, since it can apparently only be treated by riding horses), and, as in most Austen novels, nearly everyone around her is a terrible human being, of one type or another. She's incredibly sympathetic, at least to me, and I do like how clearly she sees people.]]> 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Patty
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 5
read at: 2015/12/31
date added: 2024/11/27
shelves: historical-fiction, read-in-2015, romance
review:
I'd read this before, but decided to reread it this week on the spur on the moment. It's my favorite of Austen's novels; I used to like Emma best, but when I reread it recently, I was too bothered by the classism to enjoy it as much as I once had. (Not that any of Austen's novels are free of classism, of course, but in Mansfield Park it's a quiet background noise compared to the CENTRAL FOCUS OF THE PLOT as it is in Emma.) Fanny is timid, unloved, and suffers from some undefined type of chronic illness (I'm pointlessly fascinated by trying to figure out what the hell, specifically, it is, since it can apparently only be treated by riding horses), and, as in most Austen novels, nearly everyone around her is a terrible human being, of one type or another. She's incredibly sympathetic, at least to me, and I do like how clearly she sees people.
]]> <![CDATA[The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe]]> 211025400 The essential biography of the controversial rebel, traitor, and only king of Haiti. Henry Christophe (1767 - 1820) is one of the most richly complex figures in the history of the Americas, and was, in his time, popular and famous the world over: in The First and Last King of Haiti, a brilliant, award-winning Yale scholar unravels the still controversial enigma that he was.

Slave, revolutionary, traitor, king, and suicide, Henry Christophe was, in his time, popular and famous the world over. Born to an enslaved mother on the Caribbean island of Grenada, Christophe first fought to overthrow the British in North America, before helping his fellow enslaved Africans in Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was then called, to gain their freedom from France. Yet in an incredible twist of fate, Christophe ended up fighting with Napoleon's forces against the very enslaved men and women he had once fought alongside. Later, reuniting with those he had betrayed, he offered to lead them and made himself their king. But it all came to a sudden and tragic end when Christophe--after nine years of his rule as King Henry I--shot himself in the heart, some say with a silver bullet.

Why did Christophe turn his back on Toussaint Louverture and the very revolution with which his name is so indelibly associated? How did it come to pass that Christophe found himself accused of participating in the plot to assassinate Haiti's first ruler, Dessalines? What caused Haiti to eventually split into two countries, one ruled by Christophe in the north, who made himself king, the other led by President PĂ©tion in the south?

The First and Last King of Haiti is a riveting story of not only geopolitical clashes on a grand scale but also of friendship and loyalty, treachery and betrayal, heroism and strife in an era of revolutionary upheaval.]]> 656 Marlene L. Daut 0593316169 Patty 0 to-read 4.11 2025 The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe
author: Marlene L. Daut
name: Patty
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Nicked 200555176
"Miracles, marvels, saints, sinners, love, plague, and treachery! M. T. Anderson has laid out a medieval feast of a novel, stuffed with everything I could have wished for. If I could canonize him for it, I would. But I’ll settle for shouting about how much I love this book."—Kelly Link, author of The Book of Love

"M. T. Anderson is one of our greatest and most precious voices. His books aren't just brilliantly witty and vastly entertaining, they're fixed stars of wisdom and sanity in our increasingly unhinged universe. When lost, I use them to steer by."—Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians Trilogy

The year is 1087, and a pox is sweeping through the Italian city of Bari. When a lowly monk is visited by Saint Nicholas in his dreams, he interprets the vision as a call to serve the sick. But his superiors, and the power brokers they serve, have different plans for the tender-hearted Brother Nicephorus.

Enter Tyun, a charismatic treasure hunter renowned for “liberating� holy relics from their tombs. The seven-hundred-year-old bones of Saint Nicholas are rumored to weep a mysterious liquid that can heal the sick, Tyun says. For the humble price of a small fortune, he will steal the bones and deliver them to Bari, curing the plague and restoring glory to the fallen city. And Nicephorus, the “dreamer,� will be his guide.

What follows is a heist for the ages, as Nicephorus is swept away on strange tides, and alongside even stranger bedfellows, to commit sacrilegious theft. Based on real historical accounts, Nicked is a swashbuckling saga, a medieval novel noir, a meditation on the miraculous, and a monastic meet-cute, filled with wide-eyed wonder at the world that awaits beyond our own borders.]]> 223 M.T. Anderson 0593701607 Patty 0 to-read 3.68 2024 Nicked
author: M.T. Anderson
name: Patty
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Arizona Triangle 199743735
On the cusp of forty, Justine Bailen, better known as Jo, works for an all-female detective agency based in Tucson, Arizona. While staking out a cheating spouse, she learns that her long-estranged best friend from childhood, Rose, is missing, and that Rose’s mother wants to hire Jo to find her. This case is all kinds of wrong for Jo, but she has no choice but to head back to her hometown, an hour north and a world away from Tucson.

Back in Delphi, she learns that her high school boyfriend, Tyler—who is probably part of the reason her friendship with Rose went south—is the cop assigned to the case. It doesn’t take long for Jo to realize that he’s all mixed up in it, too. To have any hope of learning the truth about Rose’s disappearance, Jo must finally face the demons she thought she’d escaped.]]> 304 Sydney Graves 0063379996 Patty 0 to-read 3.34 The Arizona Triangle
author: Sydney Graves
name: Patty
average rating: 3.34
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A History of Hand Knitting 620510 256 Richard Rutt 1931499373 Patty 0 to-read 3.94 1987 A History of Hand Knitting
author: Richard Rutt
name: Patty
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession]]> 249245 304 Peter L. Bernstein 0470091002 Patty 0 to-read 3.79 2000 The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession
author: Peter L. Bernstein
name: Patty
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Cheese and Culture: A History of Cheese and its Place in Western Civilization]]> 13407358 272 Paul Kindstedt 1603584110 Patty 0 to-read 3.58 2012 Cheese and Culture: A History of Cheese and its Place in Western Civilization
author: Paul Kindstedt
name: Patty
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon's Army and Other Diabolical Insects]]> 9845802 Wicked Bugs delves into the extraordinary powers of many-legged creatures. With wit, style, and exacting research, Stewart has uncovered the most terrifying and titillating stories of bugs gone wild. It’s an A to Z of insect enemies, interspersed with sections that explore bugs with kinky sex lives (“She’s Just Not That Into You�), creatures lurking in the cupboard (“Fear No Weevil�), insects eating your tomatoes (“Gardener’s Dirty Dozen�), and phobias that feed our (sometimes) irrational responses to bugs (“Have No Fear�). Intricate and strangely beautiful etchings and drawings by Briony Morrow-Cribbs capture diabolical bugs of all shapes and sizes in this mixture of history, science, murder, and intrigue that begins—but doesn’t end—in your own backyard.]]> 272 Amy Stewart 1565129601 Patty 0 to-read 3.77 2011 Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon's Army and Other Diabolical Insects
author: Amy Stewart
name: Patty
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird]]> 207324 Rats comes a whimsical and intimate look into the fascinating world of pigeons and the people they collect. Pigeons have been worshipped as fertility goddesses and used as crucial communicators in war by every major historical superpower from ancient Egypt to the United States, saving thousands of lives. Yet, without just cause, they are reviled today as “rats of the sky.� How did we come to misunderstand one of mankind’s most helpful and steadfast companions? Author Andrew D. Blechman traveled across the United States and Europe to meet with pigeon fanciers and pigeon haters in a quest to chronicle the pigeon’s transformation from beloved friend to feathered outlaw. Pigeons captures a Brooklyn man’s quest to win the Main Event (the pigeon world’s equivalent of the Kentucky Derby), as well as a pigeon shoot where entrants pay $150 to shoot live pigeons. Blechman tracks down Mike Tyson, the nation’s most famous pigeon lover, and he sheds light on a radical “pro-pigeon underground� in New York City. In Pigeons , Blechman tells for the first time the remarkable story behind this seemingly unremarkable bird.]]> 256 Andrew D. Blechman 0802118348 Patty 0 to-read 3.81 2006 Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird
author: Andrew D. Blechman
name: Patty
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding]]> 2458281 256 Rebecca Mead 0143113844 Patty 0 to-read 3.38 2007 One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding
author: Rebecca Mead
name: Patty
average rating: 3.38
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Stoned: Jewelry, Obsession, and How Desire Shapes the World]]> 25817092 356 Aja Raden 0062334697 Patty 0 to-read 4.06 2015 Stoned: Jewelry, Obsession, and How Desire Shapes the World
author: Aja Raden
name: Patty
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Gold: The Race for the World’s Most Seductive Metal]]> 17571480
From the lost empires of the Sahara to today’s frenzied global gold rush, a blazing exploration of the human love affair with gold by Matthew Hart, the award-winning author of Diamond

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the price of gold skyrocketed—in three years more than doubling from $800 an ounce to $1900. This massive spike drove an unprecedented global gold-mining and exploration boom, much bigger than the Gold Rush of the 1800s. In Gold, acclaimed author Matthew Hart takes you on an unforgettable journey around the world and through history to tell the extraordinary story of how gold became the world’s most precious commodity.

Beginning with a page-turning dispatch from the crime-ridden inferno of the world’s deepest mine, Hart pulls back to survey gold’s tempestuous past. From the earliest civilizations, 6,000 years ago, when gold was an icon of sacred and kingly power, Hart tracks its evolution, through conquest, murder, and international mayhem, into the speculative casino-chip that the metal has become. Hart describes each boom and bust in gold’s long story, culminating in the swift and startling emergence of China as the world’s new gold titan. In writing that Publishers Weekly calls “polished and fiery,� Hart weaves together history and cutthroat economics to reveal the human dramas that have driven our lust for a precious yellow metal.]]> 304 Matthew Hart 1451650027 Patty 0 to-read 3.49 2013 Gold: The Race for the World’s Most Seductive Metal
author: Matthew Hart
name: Patty
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Black Hunger 207567755
He must write his last testament before it is too late.

It is a story steeped in history and myth - a journey from stone circles in Scotland, to the barren wilderness of Ukraine where otherworldly creatures stalk the night, ending in the icy peaks of Tibet and Mongolia, where an ancient evil stirs . .

The Black Hunger is a spine-tingling and sprawling gothic journey into the heart of perfect for fans of Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian and Laura Purcell.

Praise for The Black Hunger :

'A terrifying gothic journey to the place where the very cruellest, hungriest creatures hide in the snow, and wear our faces. This is a magisterial debut' Michael Rowe, author of Wild Fell]]> 400 Nicholas Pullen 0316573051 Patty 0 to-read 3.61 2024 The Black Hunger
author: Nicholas Pullen
name: Patty
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sub Rosa: A Valerius Mystery 199289118
The dinner party didn’t turn out the way Aemilius Valerius expected. He didn’t expect a place at the main table. He didn’t expect to drink that much. He didn’t expect to hook up with one of the scarier dancers. And he most certainly didn’t expect to trip over the bloody corpse of his host on the floor of the informal dining room.

One man’s grisly murder is another man’s opportunity. Valerius teams up with the investigator, a plebeian with a chip on his shoulder, to discover the killer. Mad Uncle Maro promised it would be a smart career move, but that was before a second senator turned up dead. Now everything points towards a corrupt legion, an imperial assassin, and the emperor’s mother. It might have been smarter to accept that honorary priesthood, stupid hat or not.]]> 416 Jennifer Burke Patty 5
Valerius's problems: 1) someone was murdered at a dinner party he attended, and no one seems to care about figuring out who did it except for the annoying, tight-laced Plebeian watchman, Atreus.

2) Valerius is gay. Which would be fine if he just wanted to bang some pretty dancers, but an upstanding patrician man isn't supposed to want to bottom for said stoic plebeian watchman... What to do???

Burke uses a lot of modern slang, which I know annoys some readers of historical fiction, but I enjoyed it. She clearly knows a lot about the period, and her research shines through. She also doesn't make her heroes too modern in their attitudes;ĚýValerius owns slaves, has no problems with the patriarchy, is a complete class snob, and is utterly unselfaware, but he's also just enough of relatable guy (and enough of a loser) that I liked him anyway. His relationship with his family and with Atreus were all very well-developed, and I really hope this gets a sequel, because I'd love to read more.]]> 4.32 Sub Rosa: A Valerius Mystery
author: Jennifer Burke
name: Patty
average rating: 4.32
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/03
date added: 2024/10/02
shelves: historical-fiction, lgbt, mystery, read-in-2024
review:
An incredibly fun murder mystery set in ancient Rome during the early years of Caligula's reign. Valerius is your typical young Patrician man –Ěýtoo young to run for senator, too old to be a soldier, resigned to spending his nights drinking and days soaking away hangovers in the public baths, at least until one of his family members eventually succeeds in making him develop an ambition.

Valerius's problems: 1) someone was murdered at a dinner party he attended, and no one seems to care about figuring out who did it except for the annoying, tight-laced Plebeian watchman, Atreus.

2) Valerius is gay. Which would be fine if he just wanted to bang some pretty dancers, but an upstanding patrician man isn't supposed to want to bottom for said stoic plebeian watchman... What to do???

Burke uses a lot of modern slang, which I know annoys some readers of historical fiction, but I enjoyed it. She clearly knows a lot about the period, and her research shines through. She also doesn't make her heroes too modern in their attitudes;ĚýValerius owns slaves, has no problems with the patriarchy, is a complete class snob, and is utterly unselfaware, but he's also just enough of relatable guy (and enough of a loser) that I liked him anyway. His relationship with his family and with Atreus were all very well-developed, and I really hope this gets a sequel, because I'd love to read more.
]]> <![CDATA[Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History]]> 29386 388 Giles Milton 0340696761 Patty 3
The trade of the two islands is a neat little factoid of history, one that encapsulates several interesting topics � the spice trade, 17th century explorers, the first European settlement of Manhattan � but Milton doesn't manage to make the titular part of the story fill out more than 10% of the book. This would much more accurately be called a history of the early years of the East India Company (more the EIC than the VOC, though they both get more page time than Courthope himself). There's a lot about charters and the building of factories in various places in the "East Indies" and the difficulties in keeping them staffed, and not so much about nutmegs or Run itself.

Milton is also much more uncaring about the perspective of the Bandanese themselves on all this trading and invading than I would prefer, though to be fair, he's not worse than you'd guess for a white guy writing history in the 1990s. That said, if you do want the anticolonial take on this same story, check out Amitav Ghosh's The Nutmeg's Curse.

On the plus side, Nathaniel's Nutmeg comes loaded with images and maps. Why did we stop including so many pictures in pop history books? Pictures are great. Love a weird manuscript illustration from 1575. ]]> 3.83 1999 Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History
author: Giles Milton
name: Patty
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/24
date added: 2024/10/02
shelves: historical-nonfiction, food, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:
Nonfiction about (theoretically) Nathaniel Courthope, an employee of the British East India Company who single-handedly defended the island of Run from the Dutch East India Company. Run, a tiny island that is now part of Indonesia, was once one of the world's only sources of nutmeg, and thus was vastly profitable to any colonist who could control it. Courthope's defense kept it in the hands of the British � until a treaty a few years later traded it for the then Dutch-controlled, unimportant island of Manhattan.

The trade of the two islands is a neat little factoid of history, one that encapsulates several interesting topics � the spice trade, 17th century explorers, the first European settlement of Manhattan � but Milton doesn't manage to make the titular part of the story fill out more than 10% of the book. This would much more accurately be called a history of the early years of the East India Company (more the EIC than the VOC, though they both get more page time than Courthope himself). There's a lot about charters and the building of factories in various places in the "East Indies" and the difficulties in keeping them staffed, and not so much about nutmegs or Run itself.

Milton is also much more uncaring about the perspective of the Bandanese themselves on all this trading and invading than I would prefer, though to be fair, he's not worse than you'd guess for a white guy writing history in the 1990s. That said, if you do want the anticolonial take on this same story, check out Amitav Ghosh's The Nutmeg's Curse.

On the plus side, Nathaniel's Nutmeg comes loaded with images and maps. Why did we stop including so many pictures in pop history books? Pictures are great. Love a weird manuscript illustration from 1575.
]]> <![CDATA[From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (The Middle Ages Series)]]> 1989674
In From Virile Woman to WomanChrist , Barbara Newman asks these and other questions to trace a gradual and ambiguous transition in the gender strategies of medieval religious women. An egalitarian strain in early Christianity affirmed that once she asserted her commitment to Christ through a vow of chastity, monastic profession, or renunciation of family ties, a woman could become "virile," or equal to a man. While the ideal of the "virile woman" never disappeared, another ideal slowly evolved in medieval Christianity. By virtue of some gender-related trait—spotless virginity, erotic passion, the capacity for intense suffering, the ability to imagine a feminine aspect of the Godhead—a devout woman could be not only equal, but superior to men; without becoming male, she could become a "womanChrist," imitating and representing Christ in uniquely feminine ways.

Rooted in women's concrete aspirations and sufferings, Newman's "womanChrist" model straddles the bounds of orthodoxy and heresy to illuminate the farther reaches of female religious behavior in the Middle Ages. From Virile Woman to WomanChrist will generate compelling discussion in the fields of medieval literature and history, history of religion, theology, and women's studies.]]> 424 Barbara Newman 0812215451 Patty 5 4.44 1995 From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (The Middle Ages Series)
author: Barbara Newman
name: Patty
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/28
date added: 2024/10/02
shelves: historical-nonfiction, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:
Absolutely fantastic examination of gender roles and individual woman in regards to religion in medieval Europe. The chapters consist of various case studies � Heloise and Abelard; the development of the concept of Purgatory; heretics; a series of visionary mystics � which can feel a little disjointed from one another, but overall form a varied, complex glimpse at women between 1100 and 1600ce. The writing is captivating, the stories are engrossing, and overall it's just a wonderful book.
]]> <![CDATA[The Thousand Names (The Shadow Campaigns, #1)]]> 15810910
Captain Marcus d’Ivoire, commander of one of the Vordanai empire’s colonial garrisons, was resigned to serving out his days in a sleepy, remote outpost. But that was before a rebellion upended his life. And once the powder smoke settled, he was left in charge of a demoralized force clinging tenuously to a small fortress at the edge of the desert.

To flee from her past, Winter Ihernglass masqueraded as a man and enlisted as a ranker in the Vordanai Colonials, hoping only to avoid notice. But when chance sees her promoted to command, she must win the hearts of her men and lead them into battle against impossible odds.

The fates of both these soldiers and all the men they lead depend on the newly arrived Colonel Janus bet Vhalnich, who has been sent by the ailing king to restore order. His military genius seems to know no bounds, and under his command, Marcus and Winter can feel the tide turning. But their allegiance will be tested as they begin to suspect that the enigmatic Janus’s ambitions extend beyond the battlefield and into the realm of the supernatural—a realm with the power to ignite a meteoric rise, reshape the known world, and change the lives of everyone in its path.]]> 513 Django Wexler 0451465105 Patty 0 to-read 4.03 2013 The Thousand Names (The Shadow Campaigns, #1)
author: Django Wexler
name: Patty
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Chili Cookbook: A History of the One-Pot Classic, with Cook-off Worthy Recipes from Three-Bean to Four-Alarm and Con Carne to Vegetarian]]> 24388441 Ěý
Americans love chili. Whether served as a hearty family dinner, at a potluck with friends, or as the main dish at a football-watching party, chili is a crowd-pleaser. It’s slathered over tamales in San Antonio, hot dogs in Detroit, and hamburgers in Los Angeles. It’s ladled over spaghetti in Cincinnati, hash browns in St. Louis, and Fritos corn chips in Santa Fe.
Ěý
In The Chili Cookbook , award-winning author Robb Walsh digs deep into the fascinating history of this quintessential American dish. Who knew the cooking technique traces its history to the ancient Aztecs, or that Hungarian goulash inspired the invention of chili powder?
Ěý
Fans in every region of the country boast the “one true recipe,â€� and Robb Walsh recreates them allâ€�60 mouth-watering chilis from easy slow-cooker suppers to stunning braised meat creations. ThereĚýare beef, venison, pork, lamb, turkey, chicken, and shrimp chilis to choose from—there is even an entire chapter on vegetarian chili.Ěý The Chili Cookbook is sure to satisfy all your chili cravings.]]> 200 Robb Walsh 1607747952 Patty 4 food, read-in-2015
I appreciated that Walsh doesn't take sides on many of the common chili debates. There are recipes here for chili with and without beans, an entire chapter of vegetarian chilis, as well as white and green and old-school red chilis. There are recipes as low-class as frito pie and coney dogs, and as fancy as chilis that incorporate short ribs, lamb, or mole sauce. I made the recipe called "Three-Bean Chipotle Chili" and confirm that it was as delicious as the pictures were lovely.

Recommended.

I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.]]> 4.17 2015 The Chili Cookbook: A History of the One-Pot Classic, with Cook-off Worthy Recipes from Three-Bean to Four-Alarm and Con Carne to Vegetarian
author: Robb Walsh
name: Patty
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2015/12/31
date added: 2024/09/16
shelves: food, read-in-2015
review:
This book has far too much history and straightforward narrative to quite be a cookbook, but way too many recipes to be a non-fiction book. It's something in between. Which is kind of cool, actually, since I like both those genres. This book distinguishes itself from some of the other chili cookbooks out there by its focus on the history of chili and the many food traditions which have influenced it, which is an approach that I haven't seen before. It allows for some very different recipes, ranging from Aztec lobster and corn stew, to Hungarian goulash, to Greek makaronia me kima. Even when we've reached America, Walsh goes period by period, allowing you to see the different fads that have changed how we cook chili. (Although personally, I was more interested in these chapters for their historical value than because I plan on trying the recipes. I'm not cooking anything that has 'render tallow' as a step.)

I appreciated that Walsh doesn't take sides on many of the common chili debates. There are recipes here for chili with and without beans, an entire chapter of vegetarian chilis, as well as white and green and old-school red chilis. There are recipes as low-class as frito pie and coney dogs, and as fancy as chilis that incorporate short ribs, lamb, or mole sauce. I made the recipe called "Three-Bean Chipotle Chili" and confirm that it was as delicious as the pictures were lovely.

Recommended.

I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
]]> <![CDATA[The Chili Cookbook: A History of the One-Pot Classic, with Cook-off Worthy Recipes from Three-Bean to Four-Alarm and Con Carne to Vegetarian]]> 26833395 A cookbook devoted to the family friendly, tailgate party classic--featuring more than 60 tried-and-true recipes--from veteran cookbook author and Americana expert Robb Walsh.

Chili is one of the most "all-American" foods around. It is universally loved and perfect for nearly every occasion--a church potluck, sports- or TV-viewing party, casual dinner with the family, or late-night dorm room snack. Despite the evergreen popularity of chili, there are surprisingly few books on the subject. Enter The Chili Cookbook, written by veteran author and Tex-Mex sage Robb Walsh. With its impeccable recipes, fascinating and unexpected historical anecdotes, Ěýaffordable price, and whimsical package, The Chili Cookbook is sure to become an instant classic.]]> 189 Robb Walsh 1607747960 Patty 4
I appreciated that Walsh doesn't take sides on many of the common chili debates. There are recipes here for chili with and without beans, an entire chapter of vegetarian chilis, as well as white and green and old-school red chilis. There are recipes as low-class as frito pie and coney dogs, and as fancy as chilis that incorporate short ribs, lamb, or mole sauce. I made the recipe called "Three-Bean Chipotle Chili" and confirm that it was as delicious as the pictures were lovely.

Recommended.

I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.]]> 4.09 2015 The Chili Cookbook: A History of the One-Pot Classic, with Cook-off Worthy Recipes from Three-Bean to Four-Alarm and Con Carne to Vegetarian
author: Robb Walsh
name: Patty
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2024/09/16
shelves:
review:
This book has far too much history and straightforward narrative to quite be a cookbook, but way too many recipes to be a non-fiction book. It's something in between. Which is kind of cool, actually, since I like both those genres. This book distinguishes itself from some of the other chili cookbooks out there by its focus on the history of chili and the many food traditions which have influenced it, which is an approach that I haven't seen before. It allows for some very different recipes, ranging from Aztec lobster and corn stew, to Hungarian goulash, to Greek makaronia me kima. Even when we've reached America, Walsh goes period by period, allowing you to see the different fads that have changed how we cook chili. (Although personally, I was more interested in these chapters for their historical value than because I plan on trying the recipes. I'm not cooking anything that has 'render tallow' as a step.)

I appreciated that Walsh doesn't take sides on many of the common chili debates. There are recipes here for chili with and without beans, an entire chapter of vegetarian chilis, as well as white and green and old-school red chilis. There are recipes as low-class as frito pie and coney dogs, and as fancy as chilis that incorporate short ribs, lamb, or mole sauce. I made the recipe called "Three-Bean Chipotle Chili" and confirm that it was as delicious as the pictures were lovely.

Recommended.

I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
]]> The Chamber 199798109 And Then There Were None meets The Last Breath in this tense and suspenseful locked-room thriller that takes place inside a hyperbaric chamber from the author of the “brilliant, twisted, and oh so clever� (Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author) novel The Last Thing to Burn.

Six experienced saturation divers are locked inside a hyperbaric chamber. Calm and professional, they know that rapid decompression would be fatal and so they work in shifts, breathing helium, and surviving in hot, close quarters.

Then one of them is found dead in his bunk.

With four days of decompression to go before the locked hatch to the chamber can be safely opened, the group must watch one another’s backs at all times. And when another diver is discovered unresponsive, everyone is on edge. What…or who…is taking them out one by one? And will any of them still be alive by the time the four days is up or will paranoia, exhaustion, suspicion, and pressure destroy them all?]]> 352 Will Dean 166802117X Patty 0 to-read 3.46 2024 The Chamber
author: Will Dean
name: Patty
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel (The Doomsday Books, #2)]]> 75505273
The earl and the smuggler should be natural enemies, but cocksure, enragingly competent Luke is a trained secretary and expert schemer—exactly the sort of man Rufus needs by his side. Before long, Luke becomes an unexpected ally...and the lover Rufus had never hoped to find.

But Luke came to Stone Manor with an ulterior motive, one he's desperate to keep hidden even from the lord he can't resist. As the lies accumulate and family secrets threaten to destroy everything they hold dear, master and man find themselves forced to decide whose side they're really on...and what they're willing to do for love.]]> 336 K.J. Charles 1728255902 Patty 0 to-read 4.24 2023 A Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel (The Doomsday Books, #2)
author: K.J. Charles
name: Patty
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic]]> 129876 157 R.K. Narayan 0143039679 Patty 3
I suppose this is a fine introduction to the story, if you don't happen to know it, but if you're already familiar with the basic outline, there are more interesting retellings. ]]> 3.92 1957 The Ramayana: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic
author: R.K. Narayan
name: Patty
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1957
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2024/08/13
shelves: poc-author, read-in-2014, south-asia
review:
This ended up being a fairly straightforward telling of the story, without anything particularly new or different. If anyone is unfamiliar with the basic plot: there is an evil demon, Ravana, who has extracted a promise from the gods that he cannot be harmed by gods, demons, spirits, animals, etc. Therefore Vishnu gets himself incarnated as a young human prince (Ravana not having bothered to get a promise about humans, considering them too weak) named Ram (or Rama, depending on the language). As an adult, Rama, his wife Sita, and his brother Lakshmana are banished to the forest for 14 years. While there, Ravana hears about Sita's beauty and kidnaps her, taking her back to his kingdom of Lanka. Rama and Lakshmana team up with Hanuman and his army of monkeys to defeat Ravana and rescue Sita, there's a huge battle, blah blah good vs evil, blah symbolism, blah.

I suppose this is a fine introduction to the story, if you don't happen to know it, but if you're already familiar with the basic outline, there are more interesting retellings.
]]> <![CDATA[Amazing Loom Knits: Cables, colorwork, lace and other stitches * 30 scarves, hats, mittens, bags and shawls * Plus all the basics]]> 43210100
Cabled hats, lace wraps, colorwork scarves and leg warmers, textured shawls, cowls, socks, and more! The basic loom knitting techniques are easy to learn, and when you are ready for more, lace, cables, Fair Isle, and beautiful textured designs can all be accomplished on a knitting loom.

This book teaches all of the loom-knitting stitches needed in photo-illustrated steps, so it's easy to follow along and start knitting your first project right away. Once you start, you'll want to knit all 30 patterns in the book!]]> 152 Nicole F Cox 0811737977 Patty 5 nonfiction, read-in-2019 lot of 101-level, Intro-to-Loom-Knitting content out there, whether you're looking for books or websites or YouTube videos. There is much less 201-level or above content, which means that once you've made a basic scarf or hat, what you find is just... more basic scarves and hats.

But then I came across Amazing Loom Knits! A book that is very much not meant for the beginning loom knitter, and I love it for that. (By the way, if you are looking for beginner material, Round Loom Knitting in 10 Easy Lessons by the same author is one of the best books on the topic I've found.) Cox uses the patterns in this book to teach all sorts of advanced techniques: eyelet lace, Japanese lace, cables, brioche knitting, Gansey stitch, Fair Isle, etc. I immediately jumped in with the "Gansey Beanie"... which I have since abandoned, after unravelling it for the third time after making yet another mistake. But that only proves my point about Amazing Loom Knits being exactly the book I wanted: it's actually challenging! It gives me techniques that I can look forward to eventually mastering, instead of everything being so mindlessly simple that I quickly get bored. It's a book that you can spend a lot of time with, as you learn and progress to the more advanced patterns.

(By the way, I instead made what Cox calls an "Autumn Welted Toque", which has a cute and easier-to-master design of alternating raised and recessed stitches.)

Amazing Loom Knits includes thirty patterns, from the standard hats, scarves, gloves, and earwarmers, to slightly more unusual bags, socks, legwarmers, and shawls, and even a unique vest-cowl-combo-thingy. (I'm not entirely sure it's a vest-cowl-combo-thingy that I personally would want to wear, but I still applaud Cox for thinking outside the box). However, if there is an organizational structure to the book, I missed it. It's certainly not organized by type of product (putting all the hats together, for example), and it's not organized by difficulty level (Cox does label every pattern from "Beginner" to "Confident Beginner" to "Intermediate" to "Advanced", but the order they come in seems to be random). Which made choosing a pattern to work on very complicated, with much jumping back and forth from one page to another as I attempted to work out which ones I was currently capable of.

Despite that minor complaint, if you're looking for a book for advanced loom knitting, this is absolutely the one to pick up.
I read this as an ARC via .]]> 4.26 Amazing Loom Knits: Cables, colorwork, lace and other stitches * 30 scarves, hats, mittens, bags and shawls * Plus all the basics
author: Nicole F Cox
name: Patty
average rating: 4.26
book published:
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: nonfiction, read-in-2019
review:
I recently got into loom knitting � which is more or less the same thing as regular old knitting, at least in terms of the finished products, but uses a to make the process of looping and tying and twisting the yarn simpler. It's fun! And since I'm very much the type of person who is always fiddling with things, it gives me something to do with my hands when I'm watching TV. However, I hit a wall fairly early on. There is a lot of 101-level, Intro-to-Loom-Knitting content out there, whether you're looking for books or websites or YouTube videos. There is much less 201-level or above content, which means that once you've made a basic scarf or hat, what you find is just... more basic scarves and hats.

But then I came across Amazing Loom Knits! A book that is very much not meant for the beginning loom knitter, and I love it for that. (By the way, if you are looking for beginner material, Round Loom Knitting in 10 Easy Lessons by the same author is one of the best books on the topic I've found.) Cox uses the patterns in this book to teach all sorts of advanced techniques: eyelet lace, Japanese lace, cables, brioche knitting, Gansey stitch, Fair Isle, etc. I immediately jumped in with the "Gansey Beanie"... which I have since abandoned, after unravelling it for the third time after making yet another mistake. But that only proves my point about Amazing Loom Knits being exactly the book I wanted: it's actually challenging! It gives me techniques that I can look forward to eventually mastering, instead of everything being so mindlessly simple that I quickly get bored. It's a book that you can spend a lot of time with, as you learn and progress to the more advanced patterns.

(By the way, I instead made what Cox calls an "Autumn Welted Toque", which has a cute and easier-to-master design of alternating raised and recessed stitches.)

Amazing Loom Knits includes thirty patterns, from the standard hats, scarves, gloves, and earwarmers, to slightly more unusual bags, socks, legwarmers, and shawls, and even a unique vest-cowl-combo-thingy. (I'm not entirely sure it's a vest-cowl-combo-thingy that I personally would want to wear, but I still applaud Cox for thinking outside the box). However, if there is an organizational structure to the book, I missed it. It's certainly not organized by type of product (putting all the hats together, for example), and it's not organized by difficulty level (Cox does label every pattern from "Beginner" to "Confident Beginner" to "Intermediate" to "Advanced", but the order they come in seems to be random). Which made choosing a pattern to work on very complicated, with much jumping back and forth from one page to another as I attempted to work out which ones I was currently capable of.

Despite that minor complaint, if you're looking for a book for advanced loom knitting, this is absolutely the one to pick up.
I read this as an ARC via .
]]> From the Belly 210671256
As their relationship grows, a series of accidents, injuries and deaths quickly befall the ship and its crew. Isaiah is plagued by strangely prophetic dreams, even as the crew continues their endless quest for whale oil under the command of an increasingly unhinged captain.

As events spiral further out of control, the mysterious man confesses what Isaiah has begun to the crew of The Merciful has fallen into a cycle of punishment for their greed and destruction. Isaiah must confront the sea's vengeance made flesh, and choose between this new, strange love and the fate of the ship itself.]]> 284 Emmett Nahil 1959790099 Patty 0 to-read 4.08 2024 From the Belly
author: Emmett Nahil
name: Patty
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Last Days 15793201 531 Adam L.G. Nevill 1250018188 Patty 0 to-read 3.71 2012 Last Days
author: Adam L.G. Nevill
name: Patty
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Helpmeet 60301701 94 Naben Ruthnum 1988964385 Patty 0 to-read 3.31 2022 Helpmeet
author: Naben Ruthnum
name: Patty
average rating: 3.31
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Orient 22693249
Orient is an isolated town on the north fork of Long Island, its future as a historic village newly threatened by the arrival of wealthy transplants from Manhattan—many of them artists. One late summer morning, the body of a local caretaker is found in the open water; the same day, a monstrous animal corpse is found on the beach, presumed a casualty from a nearby research lab. With rumors flying, eyes turn to Mills Chevern—a tumbleweed orphan newly arrived in town from the west with no ties and a hazy history. As the deaths continue and fear in town escalates, Mills is enlisted by Beth, an Orient native in retreat from Manhattan, to help her uncover the truth. With the clock ticking, Mills and Beth struggle to find answers, faced with a killer they may not be able to outsmart.

Rich with character and incident, yet deeply suspenseful, Orient marks the emergence of a novelist of enormous talent.]]> 624 Christopher Bollen 0062329952 Patty 0 to-read 3.52 Orient
author: Christopher Bollen
name: Patty
average rating: 3.52
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Leech 59807968 In an isolated chateau, as far north as north goes, the baron’s doctor has died. The doctor’s replacement has a mystery to solve: discovering how the Institute lost track of one of its many bodies.

For hundreds of years the Interprovincial Medical Institute has grown by taking root in young minds and shaping them into doctors, replacing every human practitioner of medicine. The Institute is here to help humanity, to cure and to cut, to cradle and protect the species from the apocalyptic horrors their ancestors unleashed.

In the frozen north, the Institute's body will discover a competitor for its rung at the top of the evolutionary ladder. A parasite is spreading through the baron's castle, already a dark pit of secrets, lies, violence, and fear. The two will make war on the battlefield of the body. Whichever wins, humanity will lose again.]]> 323 Hiron Ennes 125081118X Patty 0 to-read 3.57 2022 Leech
author: Hiron Ennes
name: Patty
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Trail of the Lost: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail]]> 64000414 Ěý
As a park ranger with the National Park Service's law enforcement team, Andrea Lankford led search and rescue missions in some of the most beautiful (and dangerous) landscapes across America, fromĚýYosemite to the Grand Canyon. But though she had the support of the agency, Andrea grew frustrated with the service's bureaucratic idiosyncrasies, and left the force after twelve years. Two decades later, however, she stumbles across a mystery that pulls her right back where she left - three young men have vanished from the Pacific Crest Trail, the 2,650-mile trek made famous by Cheryl Strayed's Wild , and no one has been able to find them. It’s bugging the hell out of her.
Ěý
Andrea’s concern soon leads her to a wild environment unlike any she’s ever ventured into - missing person Facebook groups. Andrea launches an investigation, joining forces with an eclectic team of amateurs who are determined to solve the cases: a mother of the missing, a retired pharmacy manager, and a mapmaker who monitors terrorist activity for the government. Together, they track the activities of kidnappers and murderers, investigate a cult, rescue a psychic in peril, cross paths with an unconventional scientist, and reunite an international fugitive with his family. Searching for the missing is a brutal psychological and physical test with the highest stakes, but eventually their hardships begin to bear strange fruits—ones that lead them to places and people they never saw coming.]]> 352 Andrea Lankford 0306831953 Patty 0 to-read 3.70 2023 Trail of the Lost: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail
author: Andrea Lankford
name: Patty
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[City of Vengeance (Cesare Aldo #1)]]> 55918872 City of Vengeance is an explosive debut historical thriller by D. V. Bishop, set in Renaissance Florence.

Florence. Winter, 1536. A prominent Jewish moneylender is murdered in his home, a death with wide implications in a city powered by immense wealth.

Cesare Aldo, a former soldier and now an officer of the Renaissance city’s most feared criminal court, is given four days to solve the murder: catch the killer before the feast of Epiphany � or suffer the consequences.

During his investigations Aldo uncovers a plot to overthrow the volatile ruler of Florence, Alessandro de� Medici. If the Duke falls, it will endanger the whole city. But a rival officer of the court is determined to expose details about Aldo’s private life that could lead to his ruin. Can Aldo stop the conspiracy before anyone else dies, or will his own secrets destroy him first?]]> 416 D.V. Bishop 1529038774 Patty 0 to-read 3.91 2021 City of Vengeance (Cesare Aldo #1)
author: D.V. Bishop
name: Patty
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Melville: His World and Work 24692 446 Andrew Delbanco 0375702970 Patty 4
A good overview of Melville and his writing, hampered by the fact that we just don't have very many resources to work with. And alas, it's the stuff you might most want to know � his process in writing Moby Dick, or much of his personal life � where the least evidence has survived. Delbanco's own writing is solid, and his enthusiasm for Melville comes through clearly. Some of his analyses of Melville's writing were very good, and new to me. On the other hand, Delbanco frequently came back to Freudian theories, which I just cannot take seriously.

Really more of a 3.5 than a 4 rating. On the one hand, the book was a surprisingly easy and engaging read for an academic text. On the other hand, I ultimately came away feeling like I would have better spent my time just reading Melville himself. ]]> 4.05 2005 Melville: His World and Work
author: Andrew Delbanco
name: Patty
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/02
date added: 2024/07/24
shelves: historical-nonfiction, nonfiction, read-in-2024, literary-fiction
review:
Part biography of Herman Melville, part literary criticism of Melville's work.

A good overview of Melville and his writing, hampered by the fact that we just don't have very many resources to work with. And alas, it's the stuff you might most want to know � his process in writing Moby Dick, or much of his personal life � where the least evidence has survived. Delbanco's own writing is solid, and his enthusiasm for Melville comes through clearly. Some of his analyses of Melville's writing were very good, and new to me. On the other hand, Delbanco frequently came back to Freudian theories, which I just cannot take seriously.

Really more of a 3.5 than a 4 rating. On the one hand, the book was a surprisingly easy and engaging read for an academic text. On the other hand, I ultimately came away feeling like I would have better spent my time just reading Melville himself.
]]> <![CDATA[A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire]]> 98652084 A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum comes a wildly entertaining new history of Rome that uses the lives of 21 extraordinary women to upend our understanding of the ancient world.

The history of Rome has long been narrow and one-sided, essentially a history of "The Doing of Important Things," and as far as Roman historians have been concerned, women don't make that history. From Romulus through "the political stab-fest of the late Republic," and then on to all the emperors, Roman historians may deign to give you a wife or a mother to show how bad things become when women get out of control, but history is more than that.

Emma Southon's A Rome of One's Own is the best kind of correction. This is a retelling of the history of Rome with all the things Roman history writers relegate to the background, or designate as domestic, feminine, or worthless. This is a history of women who caused outrage, led armies in rebellion, wrote poetry; who lived independently or under the thumb of emperors. Told with humor and verve as well as a deep scholarly background, A Rome of One's Own highlights women overlooked and misunderstood, and through them offers a fascinating and groundbreaking chronicle of the ancient world.]]> 416 Emma Southon 1419760181 Patty 0 to-read 4.16 2023 A Rome of One's Own: The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire
author: Emma Southon
name: Patty
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome]]> 54776211 An entertaining and informative look at the unique culture of crime, punishment, and killing in Ancient Rome

In Ancient Rome, all the best stories have one thing in common—murder. Romulus killed Remus to found the city, Caesar was assassinated to save the Republic. Caligula was butchered in the theater, Claudius was poisoned at dinner, and Galba was beheaded in the Forum. In one 50-year period, 26 emperors were murdered.

But what did killing mean in a city where gladiators fought to the death to sate a crowd? In A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Emma Southon examines a trove of real-life homicides from Roman history to explore Roman culture, including how perpetrator, victim, and the act itself were regarded by ordinary people. Inside Ancient Rome's darkly fascinating history, we see how the Romans viewed life, death, and what it means to be human.
Ěý]]> 352 Emma Southon 1419753053 Patty 5
Southon has a wonderful approach to Roman history, combining a deep knowledge of the period with an awareness of the modern lens her audience inevitable brings to the topic. Although it's mostly a very funny book â€� I had to read out a few sentences to my wife, which I never do –ĚýI appreciated the pause for seriousness in her chapter on slavery.

Overall, just really excellent at both informing and entertaining. I will absolutely be seeking out anything else Southon writes.

(PS: Hilarious how many of the GoodReads reviews are offended by the appearance of the word 'fuck' in a history book. I guess if that would also bother you, here's your warning!)]]> 4.09 2020 A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome
author: Emma Southon
name: Patty
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/05
date added: 2024/07/24
shelves: historical-nonfiction, humor, archaeology, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:
Popular nonfiction in a conversational, hilarious, irreverent voice.

Southon has a wonderful approach to Roman history, combining a deep knowledge of the period with an awareness of the modern lens her audience inevitable brings to the topic. Although it's mostly a very funny book â€� I had to read out a few sentences to my wife, which I never do –ĚýI appreciated the pause for seriousness in her chapter on slavery.

Overall, just really excellent at both informing and entertaining. I will absolutely be seeking out anything else Southon writes.

(PS: Hilarious how many of the GoodReads reviews are offended by the appearance of the word 'fuck' in a history book. I guess if that would also bother you, here's your warning!)
]]> Rakesfall 195791063 Rakesfall is a groundbreaking, standalone science fiction epic about two souls bound together from here until the ends of time, from the author of The Saint of Bright Doors

Some stories take more than one lifetime to tell. There are wrongs that echo through the ages, friendships that outpace the claws of death, loves that leave their mark on civilization, and promises that nothing can break. This is one such story.

Annelid and Leveret met after the war, but before the peace. They found each other in a torn-up nation, peering through propaganda to grasp a deeper truth. And in a demon-haunted wood, another act of violence linked them and propelled their souls on a journey throughout the ages. No world can hold them, no life can bind them, and they'll never leave each other behind. But their journey will not be easy. In every lifetime, oppressors narrow the walls of possibility, shaping reality to fit their own needs. And behind the walls of history, the witches of the red web swear that every throne will fall.

Tracing two souls through endless lifetimes, Rakesfall is a virtuosic exploration of what stories can be. As Annelid and Leveret reincarnate ever deeper into the future, they will chase the edge of human possibility, in a dark science fiction epic unlike anything you've read before.]]> 304 Vajra Chandrasekera 1250847680 Patty 0 to-read 3.36 2024 Rakesfall
author: Vajra Chandrasekera
name: Patty
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Glorious Exploits 127278133 An utterly original celebration of that which binds humanity across battle lines and history.

On the island of Sicily amid the Peloponnesian War, the Syracusans have figured out what to do with the surviving Athenians who had the gall to invade their city: they’ve herded the sorry prisoners of war into a rock quarry and left them to rot. Looking for a way to pass the time, Lampo and Gelon, two unemployed potters with a soft spot for poetry and drink, head down into the quarry to feed the Athenians if, and only if, they can manage a few choice lines from their great playwright Euripides. Before long, the two mates hatch a plan to direct a full-blown production of Medea. After all, you can hate the people but love their art. But as opening night approaches, what started as a lark quickly sets in motion a series of extraordinary events, and our wayward heroes begin to realize that staging a play can be as dangerous as fighting a war, with all sorts of risks to life, limb, and friendship.

Told in a contemporary Irish voice and as riotously funny as it is deeply moving, Glorious Exploits is an unforgettable ode to the power of art in a time of war, brotherhood in a time of enmity, and human will throughout the ages.]]> 304 Ferdia Lennon 1250893690 Patty 0 to-read 4.15 2024 Glorious Exploits
author: Ferdia Lennon
name: Patty
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Wolf and His King 209330956 Madeline Miller meets Angela Carter in this spellbinding queer retelling of the 12th-century tale of Bisclavret the werewolf—unmissable for fans of Uprooted by Naomi Novik, Swordcrossed by Freya Marske, and The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden.

A noble knight hiding the beast inside. A lonely king isolated by his courtiers. Between them an impossible gulf surmountable only by the twists and turns of relentless destiny in this spellbinding retelling of Marie de France’s classic 12th-century tale of romance and adventure.

The wolf-sickness strikes always without warning, stealing Bisclavret’s body and confusing his mind. Since boyhood he hasn’t dared leave his isolated holdings—not to beg the return of his father’s lost estate, not to seek brotherhood among the court, not even to win the knighthood he yearns for. But when a new king ascends, Bisclavret must deliver his kiss of fealty or answer for the failure.

Half an exile himself, the young king is intrigued by this uneasy, rough-hewn nobleman. Bisclavret seems a perfect knight: bold, strong, and merciful. But he keeps his secrets close, and the king’s longings are not for counsel alone. As his fascination grows, the barriers between them multiply, until the king battles desperation and grief. Then Bisclavret vanishes beyond reach, just as the greatest threats to the kingdom converge. Only duty to his people stands between the king and ruin—duty, and the steady loyalty of the strangest wolf . . .]]> 0 Finn Longman 1399621025 Patty 0 to-read 5.00 2025 The Wolf and His King
author: Finn Longman
name: Patty
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Our Wives Under the Sea 61052988 Leah is changed. A marine biologist, she left for a routine expedition months earlier, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife, Miri, knows that something is wrong. Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home. As Miri searches for answers, desperate to understand what happened below the water, she must face the possibility that the woman she loves is slipping from her grasp.]]> 228 Julia Armfield 1250229901 Patty 0 to-read 3.85 2022 Our Wives Under the Sea
author: Julia Armfield
name: Patty
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Sweet Sting of Salt 186872566 Once a young woman uncovers a dark secret about her neighbor and his mysterious new wife, she’ll have to fight to keep herself—and the woman she loves—safe in this stunning queer reimagining of the classic folktale The Selkie Wife.

When a sharp cry wakes Jean in the middle of the night during a terrible tempest, she’s convinced it must have been a dream. But when the cry comes again, Jean ventures outside and is shocked by what she discovers—a young woman in labor, already drenched to the boneĚýin the freezing cold and barely able to speak a word of English.

Although Jean is the only midwife in the village and for miles around, she’s at a loss as to who this woman is or where she’s from; Jean can only assume she must be the new wife of the neighbor up the road, Tobias. And when Tobias does indeed arrive at her cabin in search of his wife, Muirin, Jean’s questions continue to grow. Why has he kept his wife’s pregnancy a secret? And why does Muirin’s open demeanor change completely the moment she’s in his presence?

Though Jean learned long ago that she should stay out of other people’s business, her growing concern—and growing feelings—for Muirin mean she can’t simply set her worries aside. But when the answers she finds are more harrowing than she ever could have imagined, she fears she may have endangered herself, Muirin, and the baby. Will she be able to put things right and save the woman she loves before it’s too late, or will someone have to pay for Jean’s actions with their life?]]> 352 Rose Sutherland 0593594592 Patty 0 to-read 3.85 2024 A Sweet Sting of Salt
author: Rose Sutherland
name: Patty
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dante in Love: The World's Greatest Poem and How It Made History]]> 19153 Dante in Love is the story of the most famous journey in literature. Rubin follows Dante's path as the poet, exiled from Florence, walked the old Jubilee routes that linked monasteries and all roads to Rome and Tuscany -- a path followed by generations of seekers from T. S. Eliot, Sigmund Freud, and Primo Levi to Bruce Springsteen. Following Dante's route, we, too, are inspired to undertake the journey of discovering ourselves.]]> 288 Harriet Rubin 0743262980 Patty 4 3.55 1000 Dante in Love: The World's Greatest Poem and How It Made History
author: Harriet Rubin
name: Patty
average rating: 3.55
book published: 1000
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/03
date added: 2024/06/05
shelves: historical-nonfiction, nonfiction, read-in-2024
review:
A wide-ranging introduction to Dante and the Divine Comedy, covering Italian history, Catholic theology, medieval Europe, the reception of Dante by modern poets and other writers, and various interpretations. It doesn't get very deep into any of these topics � it's very much an easy to read skim over the topic for general readers, not an academic thesis � but does a very good job at being what it is.
]]> <![CDATA[To Kill a Kingdom (Hundred Kingdoms, #1)]]> 36120821
The ocean is the only place Prince Elian calls home, even though he is heir to the most powerful kingdom in the world. Hunting sirens is more than an unsavory hobby--it’s his calling. When he rescues a drowning woman in the ocean, she’s more than what she appears. She promises to help him find the key to destroying all of sirenkind for good--But can he trust her? And just how many deals will Elian have to barter to eliminate mankind’s greatest enemy?]]> 346 Alexandra Christo Patty 0 to-read 3.82 2018 To Kill a Kingdom (Hundred Kingdoms, #1)
author: Alexandra Christo
name: Patty
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]>